World biggest engine

[Jonny_]

King Herald said:

The air compressors I work on have the same piston rod and crosshead design, but it is so they can use both sides of the piston, rather than just the top. There is a seal around the piston rod, so you cam maintain pressure in that half of the cylinder.

My compressors put out 1600cfm, at 2000psi, and are driven by an 800hp electric motor, so I claim biggest air compressors on Pistonheads.

Bugger... makes the 100hp ones I tinker with look rather tame! Although they do put out a mighty 3000psi so I could still win at a game of air compressor top trumps...

[dave_s13]

What does it do in actual MPG, at it's most efficient setting? just for another idea of scale.

[ScottL]

how do these huge engines start? I assume some equally massive starter motor?

[richyb]

dave_s13 said:

What does it do in actual MPG, at it's most efficient setting? just for another idea of scale.

GPH or gallons per hour is used in boat engines. It must be a scarily low decimal of a mile if you converted it to mpg.

EDIT

Out of curiousity I googled 'super tanker GPH' and what did I get!

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=1...

"1,660 gallons/per hour" which I assume is US gallons and I would imagine the tanker cruises at about 12mph. The maths anyone???

0.008683 MPG by my maths.

Edited by richyb on Tuesday 5th May 20:58

[addams]

ScottL said:

how do these huge engines start? I assume some equally massive starter motor?

Compressed air - no huge starter motor required!

[kambites]

How powerful is that lorry that pulls the things?

[dave_s13]

richyb said:

dave_s13 said:

What does it do in actual MPG, at it's most efficient setting? just for another idea of scale.

GPH or gallons per hour is used in boat engines. It must be a scarily low decimal of a mile if you converted it to mpg.

EDIT

Out of curiousity I googled 'super tanker GPH' and what did I get!

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=1...

"1,660 gallons/per hour" which I assume is US gallons and I would imagine the tanker cruises at about 12mph. The maths anyone???

0.008683 MPG by my maths.

Edited by richyb on Tuesday 5th May 20:58

Makes me feel better about my 540 that

[addams]

dave_s13 said:

What does it do in actual MPG, at it's most efficient setting? just for another idea of scale.

Can't remember the figures for the most economical RPM, but the ones i've worked with used about 240t per day at a speed of about 25 knots.

If my maths is correct, I think that works out at about 0.013 mpg

Sounds bad, but when full we carried the equivalent of 4000 truck-loads, so makes it a fair bit more efficient than taking the stuff by road.

[Strike_J]

addams said:

ScottL said:

how do these huge engines start? I assume some equally massive starter motor?

Compressed air - no huge starter motor required!

Yep, turned over using compressed air. Must take a lot of air to get that thing going mind. Wouldn't fancy changing the cylinder liner on one of those!

Edited by Strike_J on Wednesday 6th May 11:55

[rpguk]

Trevelyan said:

King Herald said:

My compressors put out 1600cfm, at 2000psi, and are driven by an 800hp electric motor, so I claim biggest air compressors on Pistonheads.

Possibly. You've certainly got the edge on pressure, but I'll see your compressors and raise you by 4 Ingersoll Rand Centac compressors. Each is capable of producing 7000 cfm, and is driven by a (IIRC) 1500hp electric motor fed directly at 6.6kV from a main electrical substation. We used to use a lot of compressed air mind..

Very nice, I presume that was fixed? What was it used for?

[redwedge5]

kambites said:

How powerful is that lorry that pulls the things?

Just what I was thinking. How does that Mercedes truck manage to pull a weight of 2300 tons!

[Celt]

My mechanics is fairly shoddy (as is my spelling :P) however any engine block i have seen is a solid piece of metal with no seems. Id guess sand mold casting? But id guess this would be impossible or take some amount of vats to pour it. Or is it made in smaller seperate parts and then joined?


And i to would love to see a video of this monster running! I seen on the telly ship engines. But never like the first pic they have always been in place working in the ship so you have no idea of the scale of the thing! Truely awesome.

[thinfourth2]

As to the lorry towing the engine its not actually pulling the worlds largest engine as if you look you will see it is only 6 clyinders, also it is too small to be a RTA96 which are taller then that so while the engine on the back of the lorry is big its no where near the biggest

Strike_J said:

. Wouldn't fancy chaning the cylinder liner on one of those!

Its actually quite easy, alot easier then on a modern car as you have easy access and all the big bolts are hydraulically tensioned

[V6]

More importantly, what does it sound like? Does it have a straight through exhaust?

[dirty boy]

7,536 litres per hour at it's most efficient setting!

Let's say it does Dover to New York, that's about 4,000 miles

Let's say it averages 25mph

That's 160 hours (nearly 7 days)

In order to complete the journey you'd need 1.2m litres of fuel on board.

So the diesel alone is going to cost £1m!! How big are the fuel tanks!

So, let's assume they have 11,000 containers on board.

Split the fuel between them, that's only about £100 per container.


When you start working through the figures, it's easy to see, that doing 1 transatlantic trip per month with 11,000 containers on, the ship can start to pay for itself quite quickly, even burning £1m of fuel each trip.

[richyb]

I could be completely wrong but I don't think a super tanker would cruise at anywhere near 25mph. I would have thought 12-15 knots is much more likely.

[dirty boy]

richyb said:

I could be completely wrong but I don't think a super tanker would cruise at anywhere near 25mph. I would have thought 12-15 knots is much more likely.

I was guessing myself.

However, big ships are surprisingly fast when they're bearing down on top of you!

[kambites]

Google says about 18mph when fully loaded.

[thinfourth2]

dirty boy said:

7,536 litres per hour at it's most efficient setting!

Let's say it does Dover to New York, that's about 4,000 miles

Let's say it averages 25mph

That's 160 hours (nearly 7 days)

In order to complete the journey you'd need 1.2m litres of fuel on board.

So the diesel alone is going to cost £1m!! How big are the fuel tanks!

So, let's assume they have 11,000 containers on board.

Split the fuel between them, that's only about £100 per container.


When you start working through the figures, it's easy to see, that doing 1 transatlantic trip per month with 11,000 containers on, the ship can start to pay for itself quite quickly, even burning £1m of fuel each trip.

Actually they don't run these diesel engines on diesel

They are ran on heavy fuel oil which is the useless stuff which comes between diesel, lube oils and road tar when distilling oil. This costs about £200 a ton.

They fuel tanks on the last container ship i was on were about 15,000 tons with two day tanks which held about 300 tons each

[Strike_J]

thinfourth2 said:

dirty boy said:

7,536 litres per hour at it's most efficient setting!

Let's say it does Dover to New York, that's about 4,000 miles

Let's say it averages 25mph

That's 160 hours (nearly 7 days)

In order to complete the journey you'd need 1.2m litres of fuel on board.

So the diesel alone is going to cost £1m!! How big are the fuel tanks!

So, let's assume they have 11,000 containers on board.

Split the fuel between them, that's only about £100 per container.


When you start working through the figures, it's easy to see, that doing 1 transatlantic trip per month with 11,000 containers on, the ship can start to pay for itself quite quickly, even burning £1m of fuel each trip.

Actually they don't run these diesel engines on diesel

They are ran on heavy fuel oil which is the useless stuff which comes between diesel, lube oils and road tar when distilling oil. This costs about £200 a ton.

They fuel tanks on the last container ship i was on were about 15,000 tons with two day tanks which held about 300 tons each

It will occasionally run on diesel for port regulations or if the steam plant is shut down but nearly all merchant vessels run on heavy fuel oil which is horrible stuff that requires heating up before it can be pumped about.

Even then the diesel in question is of a lower grade than that of which cars use.