Big engines

[Seldom Seen Slim]

As president of the Marquette Range Engineers Club I get to see lotsa cool stuff, but the other evening we saw a presentation on a local natural gas-fired generating station.    The prime movers are seven (7) Wartsila V-18 engines running on natural gas at 65psi (from the pipeline and reduced a bit, spark ignition).  514 rpm, about 24,000 hp each.  Big engines.  Then there's this little tidbit the presenter sent along when he didn't have the answer at the meeting:

"Subject: RE: Presentation for Range Engineers
 
Good afternoon! Thanks for inviting me to speak last night. I really enjoyed meeting everyone.
 
A question was asked about the total displacement of each of the engines which I was not able to answer. For those who like to do calculations, the cylinder radius is 25cm and the stroke is 58cm. There are a total of 18 cylinders per engine. The total displacement is 2,050 liters (plus or minus some change on the other side of the decimal point).
 
I have set up a reminder for late spring to reach out to your group about setting up a tour once the units are on line and reliably operating.
 
Please pass along the displacement information above to your Club and let me know if you or anyone else has any further questions.
 
 
xxxxxxxxxx
Principal Account Manager
We Energies

BIG engines.

[floydjer]

Bah,,,,,,,,,,,,25,480 liters displacement

[Seldom Seen Slim]

I think that one's bigger than those up here, but still - they were barged here from Finland, then driven about 60 miles at really slow speed so the linemen could lift every danged wire and the cops could hassle each civilian driver.  Interesting overland shipping "truck" - I'll see if I can find pics of it.  The engine itself was hung on a rear set of wheels and a front set - with 50 feet of motor spanning the gap.

These are spark-ignition engines running on pure natural gas.  The ones I saw last spring (different facility) were natural gas with a soupcon of diesel added so that compression ignition would happen, and also so the engine would have the necessary plumbing to run on all diesel if chosen/necessary.