The World's Most Powerful Diesel Engine

trex279 writes "The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the world's most powerful diesel engine built to date. Each cylinder displaces a whopping 111,143 cubic inches (1,820 liters, equivalent to a cube 4 feet on a side) and produces 7,780 horsepower. The engine is about the size of a small building." The engine is intended for use in container ships.

Comments

Re:Japanese, the late great manufacturing power?

[KokorHekkus]

Wärtsilä is a finnish company. But then there are some people who think that Nokia is japanese as well so I guess you're in good company :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4

Re:yeah but

[RancidMilk]

I can't wait to put one of those in my SUV. Think I could get 10 mpg?

Re:yeah but

[rah1420]

From TFA:

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

I've seen this web site before, but probably not cited on /. so I guess I can't holler "Dupe!" It's in my bookmarks tho'.

Your numbers are all wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

At least read the article before posting it:

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

Re:Pollution?

[QuasiEvil]

Not even close to as bad as gas. Gas 2 cycles have nasty problems due to the lube oil being in the gas (doesn't burn well, otherwise it wouldn't lubricate) and the intake/exhaust ports being open at the same time (and hence you get unburned crap blowing right through). All of this is for simplicity, and it does work. A 2 cycle gas engine is an exceedingly simple contraption, and will almost run in spite of anything you do to it.

2 cycle engines are very common once you start moving up into the larger diesels. They're very different creatures, though they operate on similar principles. Diesel 2 cycles have separate lube oil in the crankcase, similar to 4-cyc gas engines. Thus, no continuous cloud of semi-burned lube oil coming out. Also, they're all (at least all that I've ever seen) direct injected, meaning fuel is delivered directly to the cylinder once the intake/exhaust ports are closed, thus no unburned fuel flows through.

Since diesel cylinder always get a full air charge, 2 cycle makes since - it's simple, and since you're only flowing air, you don't have the wasted fuel as in a gas 2cyc. As a by-product, you also get twice as much power from the same space as the equivalent 4 cycle at equal rpms. They do have more particulate problems, but these have been resolved well enough in the last few years to meet the new EPA Tier II diesel exhaust requirements.

vary the power output based on amount

Re:Pollution?

[Phreakiture]

Are two stroke diesels as dirty running as two stroke gas engines?

No. The thing that makes gasoline two-stroke engines so dirty is the fact that they are generally valveless, combined with the fact that they burn their own lube oil, deliberately. The goal of a gasoline two-stroke engine is to reduce parts count and weight, which is why they are found on weed whackers, chainsaws, lawn mowers and snowmobiles.

A two-stroke diesel is generally not intended to reduce weight, or parts count, but size. They are not valveless, and they do not burn their lube oil. Once you get up into the 2000HP+ range, it's pretty much the only way to make the engine a manageable size.

This engine is about twice the power of the (also two stroke) engines found on rail locomotives. Those engines take up about 2/3 of the locomotive's length (the other 1/3 is generator) To get the same output in a 4-stroke engine would require an engine twice the physical size. Think about how physically large a locomotive is and contemplate that.

Re:Pollution?

[JesseL]

In a word, no.

Two stroke gasoline engines tend to pollute a lot for two reasons:
some
1. They use the incoming fuel/air mixture to push out the exhaust and inevitably some of the unburned fuel goes straight out the exhaust.

2. Most of them use the crankcase to pressurize the incoming fuel/air mixture. This necessitates adding oil to the incoming charge to lubricate the crank and piston.

These aren't issues for diesels because the fuel is injected directly to the combustion chamber after the intake and exhaust ports have closed, and the incoming charge is pressurized by a supercharger rather than the crankcase.

Is more powerful more, or less, efficient?

[walterbyrd]

In terms of fuel consumption, and air pollution, is it better to have one huge powerful engine, or two or more less powerful engines?

Re:Is more powerful more, or less, efficient?

[Pharmboy]

If you are talking diesel, one big engine, from my limited experience. This is due to the engine working at very low RPMS and in a ship, you are producing a steady load, not "start and stop" like driving a car in the city. Diesels also power down nicely and use fuel according to the load, so running at half of potential power uses much less fuel.

I also note the article does NOT say 7780 HP, it says 108,920 horsepower at 102 rpm and more importantly, 5,608,312 lb/ft at 102rpm. I knew that 7780 HP was wrong because you can tweak the fire out of a 6 litre chevy diesel and get 1000 HP and 1500 to 2000 lb/ft torque.

Most diesels have a 3/2 to 2/1 ratio of torque over HP, but then most peak in the 2400-3800RPM area, not 102. That is an absurd amount of torque, which is what is needed to twist a prop, after all. At 1,556,002 cubic inches, this is 3.6 lb/ft of torque for every cubic inch, which is similar to the above example of a 6.0L engine (364 cu. in.) getting 1310.4 lb/ft. (stock would be closer to 650-850 lb/ft).

In otherwords, a pretty efficient engine.

er

[mgabrys_sf]

If they're now making desiel engines this size for cargo, I'm curious if perhaps it's time to switch to nuclear. The waste-return equation seems out of whack for petrochemical solutions.

Re:er

[lgw]

A nuclear engine (of a size to produce the same ~100khp) is far less of an environmental worry than the cargo carried by a supertanker. Of course, you'd want a reactor design that wouldn't become a problem when submerged ("you can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor!") but that's not a problematic design constraint - the basic idea behind "pebble bed" reactors would work here.

Really, nuclear engines are only seriosly problematic for airplanes (because of "roll-up"), and even that problem could be designed around. People just have an irrational fear of anything nuclear, and we relally need to get past that if we're going to care about CO2.

Comparable to 1904 steam engine technology

[Animats]

In terms of mere size, this is comparable to steam engines of 1904. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (the "IRT" to New Yorkers) built a plant in 1904 with a total output of 132,000 horsepower. The compound steam engines had bigger cylinders than this Diesel; 42 inches and 86 inches, compared to 38 inches for the new marine Diesel.

That was the high point of piston engines. Electrical generation was already converting from pistons to turbines, and even that 1904 IRT plant had a few smaller steam turbines.

There have been much more powerful marine powerplants than this, but they're usually multi-engine turbine systems. There's an annoying tendency in commercial shipping to have only one engine on large ships, which occasionally leads to accidents.

Not even the most powerful engine...

[georgewilliamherbert]

The MAN B&W 14K98MC7 has nearly 8% more power (116,875 HP vs 108,920 HP for this Wartsila-Sulzer) http://www.manbw.com/engines/TwoStrokeLowSpeedProp Engines.asp?model=K98MC7

Great fact-checking to start 2007 with...

Re:That kind of efficiency is impossible

[bcrowell]

Conversion of heat into any other type of energy achieves it's maximum at 33% (the other 66% heats up the environment, according to the Laws of Thermodynamics).
No, the maximum efficiency for a heat engine is given by 1-T(low)/T(high) (absolute temperatures), which can be higher than 33%. If you can make T(high) high enough, and T(low) low enough, you can get 99% efficiency, or 99.9% efficiency, or whatever you like.

Arguably, these laws have not been proven, and they can't ever be proven. But they have been unchanged for quite some time now.
No, actually they have been proved, mathematically, within their realm of applicability, and to within the level of statistical certainty that's inherent in them (which is not an issue for a macroscopic device).

A breakthrough like this would not go unnoticed and thanks to my thermodynamics professor I would be the first one to hear about it (he's a nut about engines). So I think that part of the article is something someone tried to spike in to give the engine more of a wow-factor
No, the problem is just that you don't understand thermodynamics.

copyright violation

[bcrowell]

Hnm...the article is a little disreputable. As far as I can tell, here's what happened. Some guy named Todd Walke scraped photos and diagrams out of the pdfs on this Wartsila web page. He made his own web page, which, AFAICT from Google, no longer exists, possibly because he got a take-down notice from Warsila. Meanwhile, a bunch of other people have mirrored the page. So in other words, the Slashdot story linked to somebody's copyright-violating copy of a copyright-violating copy of some of Wartsila's pics. As other people have pointed out, it's actually not the world's most powerful diesel engine, either. Oh well, the pics are cool!

I am a self confessed Diesel nerd

[Flying pig]

And I admit I love these things. The wonderful thing about Diesels is how well they scale, like a supremely well designed web server or database engine. Petrol engines seem to have a cylinder optimum of around 250-500 cc, which is why you get the usual range of engine sizes and options (from the classical 250cc single cylinder motorbike to the 12 cylinder 4 litre V12 that Jaguar once produced.) You can go outside this range, down to 25cc two strokes and up to the 700cc or so sometimes used in the US, and you can get more output, for a short time, with smaller cylinders, but you are departing from the optimum for efficiency.

Now look at Diesels. The smallest working Diesels are the little glow plug engines that are used to power model aircraft - actually semi-Diesels whose spiritual big daddy is the classical single cylinder 9 litre like the Bolinder. The biggest are these marine monsters with their two-metre throws. But they all are constrained by a few parameters that are broadly the same - the MEP and the mean piston speed.

At the normal running speed of about 100rpm the engine in the article is doing about 6-7 metres per second. At its normal cruising rpm of about 2000, my car engine is doing 33 revs per second * 2 * 90mm stroke - or 6 metres/sec. I haven't checked, but I fully expect that the working MEPs are within the same ballpark. It's nice to see that engines ranging from grammes to kilotonnes are constrained by a simple law based in metallurgy and tribology.

The other nice thing is, that with the exception of the tiny toy engines, all Diesels work more or less the same way, and the direction of change is by downwards replacement - technologies developed for large marine engines find their way ultimately into small engines. Modern auto engines with their electronic solenoid operated injection systems are basically a shrink of the marine technology of the 80s and 90s. Turbochargers also undergo shrinkage as their technology moves from marine to auto use, so we get the variable vane turbocharger turning up on entry level cars.

It would be wrong to force too many analogies, but there are resemblances between Diesel systems development and computer development that are perhaps more than skin deep.