You Asked:
How do cooling systems work in internal combustion engines? Dhiru, Guwahati, India
Marshall Answered:
An internal combustion engine produces a lot of heat. In fact, when you burn gasoline in an engine to create motion, most of the gasoline (like 75%) produces heat rather than motion. The engine therefore needs a way to eliminate all this heat or the engine will melt.
There are two common cooling techniques for internal combustion engines:
1) Air cooling The air cooling technique is common on lawn mowers and other lawn/garden equipment, motorcycle engines, some airplane engines and some car engines. For example, the original Volkswagen beetles engine was air cooled. Porsche offered air-cooled engines into the 1990s. Compared to water cooling, air cooling is much lighter and simpler.
Some air-cooled engines supplement the cooling process with an oil radiator. Heat that the oil picks up is dissipated in the radiator. Since the oil, the oil pump and the piping are already in place, the oil radiator is a simple add-on.
2) Water cooling Water cooling is far more common on car engines because it is more reliable, especially in big engines on hot days. The basic idea is simple. Water flows around the engines cylinders to cool them. The hot water is then pumped to a radiator where air flowing through the radiator can dissipate the heat (a better name for the radiator would be the convector, since the main way it loses heat is by convection).

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