
In many mobile applications internal combustion engines are more frequently used due to their higher power-to-weight ratio, steam engines are used when higher efficiency is needed and weight is less of an issue. Military: Steam tank (tracked), Steam tank (wheeled).Construction: Steam roller, Steam shovel.Road: Steam wagon, Steam bus, Steam tricycle, Steam car.Agriculture: Traction engine, Steam tractor.

#Steam engine portable#
Having secured the winch cable to a sturdy tree at the desired destination, the machine will move towards the anchor point as the cable is winched in.Ī portable engine is a stationary engine mounted on wheels so that it may be towed to a work-site by horses or a traction engine, rather than being fixed in a single location. It is designed for logging use and can drag itself to a new location. The steam donkey is technically a stationary engine but is mounted on skids to be semi-portable. These include engines used in thermal power stations and those that were used in pumping stations, mills, factories and to power cable railways and cable tramways before the widespread use of electric power.

The presence of several phases between heat source and power delivery has meant that it has always been difficult to obtain a power-to-weight ratio anywhere near that obtainable from internal combustion engines notably this has made steam aircraft extremely rare. Very low power engines are used to power models and specialty applications such as the steam clock.

Their use in agriculture led to an increase in the land available for cultivation. Steam engines can be said to have been the moving force behind the Industrial Revolution and saw widespread commercial use driving machinery in factories and mills, powering pumping stations and transport appliances such as railway locomotives, ships and road vehicles. At the turn of the nineteenth century, steam-powered transport on both sea and land began to make its appearance becoming ever more predominant as the century progressed. At first it was applied to reciprocating pumps, but from the 1780s rotative engines (that is, those converting reciprocating motion into rotary motion) began to appear, driving factory machinery. Since the early eighteenth century steam power has been set to a variety of practical uses. Typical gasoline/petrol and diesel engines are internal combustion engines. This is contrasted to the generally more familiar form of heat engine (known as an internal combustion engine) in which the working fluid of the power cycle is the gaseous products of the combustion process, and the heat is added to the cycle by combustion of fuel internal to the machine. This explains the success of this engine, because less expensive and/or more renewable or sustainable fuel or heat sources can be used, because the working fluid remains separated from the fuel, and therefore cleaner, which results in less maintenance and longer engine life. The external combustion engine allows the burning of virtually any fuel as the heat source for the engine. In an external combustion engine, heat is supplied to the working fluid of the power cycle by an external source. Steam engines have been classified as external combustion engines.

'Preserved' (but incomplete) portable engine, Tenterfield, NSW-an example of a mobile steam engine External combustion engine
