The big plus, IMO, is the flexibility in load handling that breathes new life into the generation using "sustainable" sources.
Ships don’t use NG for fuel.
However, that is not a whole lot of houses, like 12k homes. Obviously, if you include businesses, that number goes down.
Great for ships, though!
This is a big news item. Thanks for posting. More efficient than turbines. Wow. These could be used for distributed power generation which nicely segues into having a more robust power grid.
Politics is a scam and we’re suckers for playing.
Well that’s cool but Sako and Valmet rifles, The Winter war the anti Tank Lahti? Metal Rock Church Mass, Hot chicks and even Lingonberrys beat that.
Wigwam! Hanoi Rocks LOL
The article is a little confusing. They talk about diesels (compression ignition) and NG (spark ignition).
Haven’t heard of ship propulsion units using NG but will have to research it.
Did I mention Sauna?
This is greener than anything else on the planet, this is pretty incredible.
Re: “The engine can be continuously operated at 10 percent load, and can reach full load in two minutes from the start command.”
That’s interesting.
Diesel generators have long been used in multiple locations in New York City, and, I assume, in other densely populated areas.
Natural gas would would be optimal if they could build a pipeline from the tight shale formations in the northern Appalachians directly into NYC.
Something like this would also be great at place like Miami where they have all those town home high rises or NYC where one or two of these could power an entire building.
I still believe that the true economics of wind and solar are awful. You have to build the core wind and solar plant, then you have to build backup at the same capacity for the times the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. That means huge battery storage, supercapacitor storage, pumped storage, or huge internal combustion engines such as these. You are effectively paying for TWO complete power plants where you only use one at a time - in other words, your plant Capacity Factor is terrible. What a waste of resources to fix a hoax.
For marine applications, these engines could really contribute to cleaning up the air in harbors. The Wärtsilä site says their 20DF is also optimal for harbour genset application for a wide range of vessel types. There's a big push to reduce harbor emissions and I won't be surprised if LNG powered harbor craft are going to be a big part of that.
Some may be asking about the meaning of Brake Mean Effective Pressure of an internal combustion engine (I had to look that up). It isn't a real pressure reading at all. It's a metric to describe engine performance that happens to work out to units of pressure, so it is called "Pressure" even though it isn't. Very good explanation at: What is the Mean Effective Pressure (MEP) of an engine ?. "The mean effective pressure can be regarded as an average pressure in the cylinder for a complete engine cycle. By definition, mean effective pressure is the ratio between the work and engine displacement. There are different “flavors” of mean effective pressure:"
• indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP)
• brake mean effective pressure (BMEP)
• friction mean effective pressure (FMEP)
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The Most Efficient 4-Stroke Engine in the World: The New Wärtsilä 31 | Wärtsilä
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEOF9DwVNq8
Published on Jun 2, 2015 That’s more than 2 years ago.
12 MW = 16K horsepower. Beats that new Chrysler muscle car by a long shot.