[WallCrawler]

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ccsshb/12cyl/

The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the most powerful and most efficient prime-mover in the world today. The Aioi Works of Japan's Diesel United, Ltd built the first engines and is where some of these pictures were taken.
It is available in 6 through 14 cylinder versions, all are inline engines. These engines were designed primarily for very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them.

The cylinder bore is just under 38" and the stroke is just over 98". Each cylinder displaces 111,143 cubic inches (1820 liters) and produces 7780 horsepower. Total displacement comes out to 1,556,002 cubic inches (25,480 liters) for the fourteen cylinder version.

Some facts on the 14 cylinder version:
Total engine weight: 2300 tons (The crankshaft alone weighs 300 tons.)
Length: 89 feet
Height: 44 feet
Maximum power: 108,920 hp at 102 rpm
Maximum torque: 5,608,312 lb/ft at 102rpm

Fuel consumption at maximum power is 0.278 lbs per hp per hour (Brake Specific Fuel Consumption). Fuel consumption at maximum economy is 0.260 lbs/hp/hour. At maximum economy the engine exceeds 50% thermal efficiency. That is, more than 50% of the energy in the fuel in converted to motion.
For comparison, most automotive and small aircraft engines have BSFC figures in the 0.40-0.60 lbs/hp/hr range and 25-30% thermal efficiency range.

Even at it's most efficient power setting, the big 14 consumes 1,660 gallons of heavy fuel oil per hour.



A cross section of the RTA96C:


The internals of this engine are a bit different than most automotive engines.
The top of the connecting rod is not attached directly to the piston. The top of the connecting rod attaches to a "crosshead" which rides in guide channels. A long piston rod then connects the crosshead to the piston.
I assume this is done so the the sideways forces produced by the connecting rod are absorbed by the crosshead and not by the piston. Those sideways forces are what makes the cylinders in an auto engine get oval-shaped over time.

[turmite]

WC I am seeing potential here for a diy diesel powered 3 axis router to end all routers!!:idea:

Mike

[teilhardo]

Thats the biggest *&%$# IC engine I've ever seen. What are they going to use it for? Why use a diesel engine, why not go with nuclear power or gas turbine?

[WallCrawler]

Originally posted by teilhardo
Thats the biggest *&%$# IC engine I've ever seen. What are they going to use it for? Why use a diesel engine, why not go with nuclear power or gas turbine?

From what I read, it going in a Toyota pickup to go against Ford super duty... LOL

[Mariss Freimanis]

Geez.. My calculator shows 3,776 gallons per hour.

108,920 HP times 0.26 lbs/HP/hr = 28,320 lbs / hr. Figuring 7.5 lbs / gallon for oil (from my private pilot days) gives 3,776 gallons per hour, not 1,666.

Mariss

[kenlambert]

I want to see the size of the torqe wrench LOL

bet that would be a man killer tool

[whiteriver]

woha.
Thats about as big and powerful as my Ford F250 Powerstroke. But I get better fuel economy.

Donny

[Swede]

Originally posted by Mariss Freimani
Geez.. My calculator shows 3,776 gallons per hour.

108,920 HP times 0.26 lbs/HP/hr = 28,320 lbs / hr. Figuring 7.5 lbs / gallon for oil (from my private pilot days) gives 3,776 gallons per hour, not 1,666.

Mariss

I think those numbers are mutually exclusive, the 0.26 figure being best economy, and the 108,920 HP being peak HP. Not sure. One thing to ponder is the fuel consumption of this humongous diesel vs. a modern gas turbine engine as used on say a Boeing 777. I don't know what the horsepower of the 777's Rolls Royce Trent engine is, but it is astronomical, and at takeoff power settings will consume probably 4000 gallons/hour or over a gallon per second per engine. 90,000 lb thrust.

So here you have a giant diesel engine which weighs 4,600,000 pounds, or the weight of 6 Boeing 777 airplanes combined. It is VERY strange to me that an engine of this mass has a use. Imagine the maintenance! The Japanese are smart, it must be economically viable. Amazing stuff.

[whiteriver]

Well at those numbers under a full steam from china to seattle that would be about $500,000. Even at that high of a shipping cost those damn american companies in china can still ship raw materials from the us to china make the item and ship it back to the US. And sell it to us cheaper than we can make it for buying the raw materials here.
Just can't compete with slave labor and a US government that makes it easy for China to sell here. Not to mention the tax breaks American Companies get for going over there.
I could pack my bags and move over there and make 3 times the money and live ten times better starting a company there. Nah. American born and bread American till i'm Dead.

Donny

[teilhardo]

Hey Donny,
You could just start a company, have all its ops done (and you could even stay here) in the US and have it "headquartered" (ie a po box) in the Carribean, live here and enjoy all the tax breaks of the Virgin Island govts.

[Mariss Freimanis]

Well, if it makes you feel any better, Gecko drives are designed here, manufactured here, shipped from here and tech-supported from here. We use domestic electronic components (where possible), sheetmetal and printed circuit boards. The hand-assembly is also contracted out to domestic assembly shops. We do that because the price is nearly the same as off-shore but we have much better contol over quality and a much shorter turn-around time.

The choice is based entirely on practical economic considerations; equal quality, near equal prices but I can order up 5,000 aluminum housings, have them fabricated, tapped, anodizied, silkscreened, and have them in 2 weeks. Can't do that off-shore.

By the way, over 35% of our sales are international; we sell a lot of drives in China.

Mariss

[Bloy2004]

Hmmm... well after all that's been said above, don't forget that we are all on the same little ball, like houses in a neighborhood, neighborhoods in a city, cities in a county, counties in a state, states in a country, countries in a world...that small little ball.....

[teilhardo]

...Thats in orbit around a sun...which is part of a galaxy...

[Mariss Freimanis]

Originally posted by Bloy2004
Hmmm... well after all that's been said above, don't forget that we are all on the same little ball, like houses in a neighborhood, neighborhoods in a city, cities in a county, counties in a state, states in a country, countries in a world...that small little ball.....

Jeez..Two seperate subjects.

The little houses thing is fine until you realize some that live in their little houses elsewhere want real hard to burn down your little house and kill eveyone in it including your dog and cat. The world is not a pleasant place where everyone thinks like you. Lose that conceit; you, not they, are in error. Some mean you serious harm and will want to visit on you regardless how "universal" you feel. Think "twin towers" if it helps.

On the economic thing. One idea that has always worked for me is the Dentist, the Baker and the Car Dealer thing.

The Dentist fills the Baker's teeth. The Baker bakes bread to pay the Dentist. The Car Dealer buys the bread from the Baker and sells the Dentist a car.

Each has a trade-defict with whose goods and services he is buying, yet in this story everything works out. Why?

Each contributes by their effort and work to increase the wealth of the economy. If you are short-sighted you will focus on each participant's "trade deficit".

Mariss

[whiteriver]

I guess I'm short sighted. I know that for the global economy and eventually our own economy we need trade through out the world. I just wish that it would hurry up and even out. West and east Germany had that problem a few years ago. The had guys in east germany that were makeing parts for one price and then they become one country. All sudden West Germany says wait a minute. My value is more than there's how can you justify paying us the same. The Poor got a little richer and the average got a little poorer. And of course the rich got richer.
When a 10 year old slave in china and a 30 year old factory worker in the US make the same wage then all will be even in the world.

Donny

[teilhardo]

I might be stepping on shaky ground here '
Like all "natural" systems, the economy is by no means immune to an equilibrium. For many years (before a global economy was ever conceived), the US economy had the workers (working class), the middle class and the owners of production. Now (at least in my limited So Cal view), we have a shrinking working class, a shrinking middle class, a growing unemployed "class" and a growing upper class. This working, middle and upper class phenomena is being created globally now, not nationally, and only capitalism's "invisible hand" knows the answer to the "random" (hey...have hope, some argue that sometimes there really is an equation behind chaos) equilibrium shift. One thing I always wonder is where are the unemployed in the US going?
Anyone here with insight into this?
I haven't heard of anyone flying to India or China for interviews

Isn't it ironic how all the countries that we "saved" from communism produced some of the middle class jobs that are now being outsourced?
I think you're right Donny, its all about evening things out, one thing is for certain, "the rich [get] richer..."
-Tei

[Ferenczyg]

Originally posted by whiteriver

Just can't compete with slave labor and a US government that makes it easy for China to sell here. Not to mention the tax breaks American Companies get for going over there.
I could pack my bags and move over there and make 3 times the money and live ten times better starting a company there. Nah. American born and bread American till i'm Dead.

Donny

When they *whoever they are* want to produce *really* cheap, they work directly int the ship on international waters, to avoid any posible kind of taxes they can.

Of course no precission work, mostly cheap injection plastic products and similars.

[doug6949]

Getting back to the engine thing, it shows that it is possible to actually build a true constant pressure combustion engine. This is what Rudolph Diesel's invention was supposed to be. Modern diesel engines are actually closer to constant volume combustion, similar to petrol engines. It's nice to see the thermodynamic models actually work.

[glorybe2]

Well at those numbers under a full steam from china to seattle that would be about $500,000. Even at that high of a shipping cost those damn american companies in china can still ship raw materials from the us to china make the item and ship it back to the US. And sell it to us cheaper than we can make it for buying the raw materials here.
Just can't compete with slave labor and a US government that makes it easy for China to sell here. Not to mention the tax breaks American Companies get for going over there.
I could pack my bags and move over there and make 3 times the money and live ten times better starting a company there. Nah. American born and bread American till i'm Dead.

Donny

I doubt that labor is the reason that China produces product so cheaply. China simply does not regulate industry at a sane level. Cadmium in jewelry, lead in kids' toys, dry wall that poisons an entire home are what we see on our side of the pond. But there the worst forms of pollution and death and disease for large numbers of the public are not considered an issue at all. After all if people in China perish their government has an endless supply of more people.
In the US our problems are quite different. In any decent factory there is an observable lack of human workers. We have some automation but we have gone about it wrong. Japanese factories use some of the dumbest robots in the world. Some even run of of cams instead of computers. They are cheap to build and the Japanese use lots and lots of them. We use far more versatile robots that are capable of numerous tasks but are expensive and require able engineers to keep running. They are way too expensive. So we have issues with regulation, the nature of our automation and then to top it off since we have few well paying jobs in factories we have eliminated many workers as consumers of the products that we do produce.

[glorybe2]

I guess I'm short sighted. I know that for the global economy and eventually our own economy we need trade through out the world. I just wish that it would hurry up and even out. West and east Germany had that problem a few years ago. The had guys in east germany that were makeing parts for one price and then they become one country. All sudden West Germany says wait a minute. My value is more than there's how can you justify paying us the same. The Poor got a little richer and the average got a little poorer. And of course the rich got richer.
When a 10 year old slave in china and a 30 year old factory worker in the US make the same wage then all will be even in the world.

Donny

I am not certain that changing the topic is the right thing to do but since there are economic opinions being posted I will respond. Going into the first world war Germany had a vast fear of the notion of capitalism. It would destroy the aristocratic model by which Germany had thrived. Going into the second world war Germany feared communism or socialism. Hitler came along and also had issues with what to do with the sick,disabled,unemployed etc.. His solution was to murder them all. Further he wanted to make certain that only the strongest and healthiest had a chance to reproduce.
Oddly we are still wrestling with the same issues. In the US some states have reasonable programs to aid the poor and the sick under some circumstances while other states do not. The unemployed suffer a similar fate. They may or may not have some minimal level of safety through public programs.
In the mean time our government seems to have lost touch with the idea that we must produce, The bulk of our young people seem to value not working instead of actually working hard,
There is hope. For example we have a local company that found a new way to grow real, salt water shrimp and reuse the same ocean water over and over again so that there is not even an issue with using and dumping salt water. This system is already supplying large quantities of live shrimp for bait all along the south eastern corridor and shrimp for food as well. This system can scale up and it actually does employ workers! We may well have a way to become a world supplier of quality, real, pink shrimp to the world at a substantial profit. The same company also raises mangrove trees in the same controlled environment for replacing damaged marsh areas. I suspect that their methods might also work quite nicely for fish farming.
That is a small example of how a new technology may well bring a lot of money into our nation as well as provide inexpensive sea food for our tables.
Conversely we will suffer from breakthroughs made in other nations. For example stem cell medical developments will be a multi billion dollar area that may well pay for a century or two on an enormous level. At home the right wing crushed stem cell research for a decade causing many of our best researchers to relocate to Europe and England. Once they patent a cure they will be reaching into American pockets for decades. Cancer and heart disease as well as diabetes are mega industries that America may not do well in.