Conversion from Cubic centimeters to Kiloliters

Information about the Cubic centimeter (cm³)

The cubic centimetre is a unit of volume equal to one millionth of a cubic metre, written cm³ and often abbreviated cc. It is the volume of a cube one centimetre on each side, and since the litre was redefined in 1964 it is exactly one millilitre. The two names describe the same quantity, but they belong to different trades and are not interchangeable in every context.

Engines are its most visible home. Motorcycle and small-engine displacement is quoted in cubic centimetres, so a 125, a 600 and a litre bike are named by the swept volume of their cylinders. Licence categories in much of the world are drawn on the same scale, with a 125 cc limit for learners in many European countries, which turns the unit into a legal boundary rather than a mere description.

Car engines cross over to litres at about a thousand cubic centimetres, purely for readability, so a 1998 cc engine is advertised as a two-litre. American practice used cubic inches for the same purpose well into the 1980s, and the conversion is worth knowing: 1000 cubic centimetres is 61 cubic inches, so a 350 cubic inch engine is 5.7 litres.

Medicine has deliberately retreated from the abbreviation. Syringes were once marked in cc and clinicians spoke that way, but handwritten cc can be misread as a unit symbol or as a pair of zeros, and medication safety bodies now place it on lists of abbreviations that should not be used. The instruction is to write mL instead, even though the quantity is identical.

Materials science keeps the unit for density. Grams per cubic centimetre is the standard way to state how heavy a substance is for its size: water is 1.00, aluminium 2.70, steel about 7.85, lead 11.34 and gold 19.3. Those numbers are memorable precisely because the cubic centimetre is small enough that everyday solids land between one and twenty.

Modelling and manufacturing use it for part volume. Computer-aided design reports the volume of a component in cubic centimetres, which converts directly to mass once a density is chosen and to material cost in additive manufacturing. It is the natural unit for anything that fits in a hand.

One cubic centimetre equals 1 millilitre, 1000 cubic millimetres, 0.000001 cubic metres, or about 0.061 cubic inches.

Information about the Kiloliter (kL)

The kilolitre is a unit of volume equal to one thousand litres, and therefore exactly one cubic metre. Its symbol is kL. The two names describe the same quantity, and which one appears depends entirely on the trade and the country: water utilities in the southern hemisphere say kilolitre where European ones say cubic metre.

Household water is where most people meet it. Australian, New Zealand and South African water bills are issued in kilolitres, tariffs are set as a price per kilolitre with rising blocks for heavier use, and drought restrictions are expressed as an allowance of so many kilolitres per household per quarter. A typical family uses between fifty and two hundred a year, so the annual bill fits in three digits.

Because the unit equals a cubic metre, it also carries an unusually direct physical meaning. A kilolitre of water weighs one tonne and would fill a cube one metre on each side, so a household allowance of a hundred kilolitres is a hundred tonnes of water, delivered, pumped and treated. Stating it that way is one reason the unit appears in conservation campaigns as often as on invoices.

Bulk liquid logistics uses it for cargo. A flexible tank fitted inside a shipping container carries around twenty-four kilolitres of wine, juice or edible oil, road tankers are rated in kilolitres, and depot storage is planned in thousands of them. Japanese petroleum statistics are published in kilolitres rather than in barrels, which makes Japanese energy figures awkward to compare with those of countries that use the barrel.

Industry generally prefers the cubic metre for the same quantity, because it is the coherent SI form and because it multiplies cleanly with metres of head, square metres of surface and other dimensional quantities. The kilolitre survives where the substance being measured is a liquid sold to the public, which is exactly where a name containing the word litre reads more naturally.

Converting is trivial in one direction and awkward in the other. One kilolitre is one cubic metre exactly and a thousand litres exactly, but 264.2 United States gallons and 220 imperial gallons, and about 6.29 barrels of oil, none of which are round numbers.

One kilolitre equals 1000 litres, 1 cubic metre, about 264.2 US gallons, or about 220 imperial gallons.