Giant engines

[petecossie]

For anyone who likes big/giant internal combustion engines they will love this article.
I worked for 5 years in Indonesia on an oilfield project and we had huge 8 cylinder White Superior engines and Ajax 2 stroke gas compressor units, the noise when they started up was a joy to behold.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/slideshow/largest-engines-ever-made

 

[abh29]

I wonder how many litres the CAT trucks holds. How many gpm?

 

[Delk]

I spent 10 years as a field engineer for Warstila (see slide 20) and then 8 years working for the power company in Cayman where it was all done by diesel generators. With Wartsila I was here there and everywhere on ships and in power stations.
In Cayman I was in charge of six generators. The smallest two were 8 cylinders making over the thousand HP. They did have pistons that were 620mm across. My big engines were 12 and 14 cylinder MAN's. They had 480mm pistons and the 14 cylinder one made around 20 thousand HP.

They are all amazingly reliable. It does take an overhead crane to do any maintenance but working on them was fun if not very hot.

I now work for a shipping company and our fuel orders get supplied by barges to each ship once a month and are measured in cubic meters.

 

[abh29]

Whilw working in falmouth docks a few years ago I had it explained to me how the oil supplier at the docks would be quoting various ships at sea for fuel orders. The ships would be getting other quotes from other sources some overseas and pick were the beal was best. The oil was supplied from an off shore bouy.

 

[Redline]

In the 90s as the internet started, I visited and worked Telehouse in London on numerous occasions. Telehouse was and still is the primary internet connection point for all the ISPs in the UK.

In the basement they had 3 huge marine diesels that provided emergency standby power for the (then single) building and all the services within it. They now have 8 x 2.5MVA 11kV generating sets plus 2 standbys. IT is very power hungry. That's going to make a great deal of noise.
I know of another installation that has two huge diesels that constantly spin 10 tons of flywheel to produce instantaneous power should all of the redundant supply feeds fail.

The Telehouse building itself is designed to protect from all kinds of disasters and terrorist attack.
Was then one of the most important buildings outside government and nuclear power facilities. Still quite important. Good chance this post has gone through there on its way to you.