Commercial co-gen plant

[veggie]

Interesting co-generation story....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxc4C_HY7UM

veggie

[glort]

Lots of heat and power there.
Not really sure what to make of it when they say the engines have run 200K hours then they talk about minor and Major rebuilds.


THis setup is probably a bit more the forum readers DIY Speed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsMAdspwRUY

This is a commercial small system that is also interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcaGQDstDug

[quinnf]

They must have Willem's engines.  200,000 hours!  I'm sure I read he guarantees that.

[Jens]

I heard 4000 hrs for service interval for the first unit and 10000 hrs (!!!!!!) for service interval for the Yanmar system !
That is just exceptional!
One of my biggest issues I had was service interval - around 200 hrs for the engine and about half of that for cleaning the exhaust heat exchanger plus a major tear down during the summer. It was a continuous effort. With these service intervals it actually makes a LOT more sense to go CHP.
I did not catch any figures on expected life of the systems.

Is there any engine out there than can run at even 4000 hrs service interval on WVO (or even diesel for that matter)?

[LowGear]

Well the grid tie of a 5 kw generator caught my attention.  I'll phone them in the morning.

I wish I could figure out some way to transport hot water 200 feet through a lava bed.  Did I forget "economically"?

Nice YouTubes, Thanks,

Casey

[glort]

One of my biggest issues I had was service interval - around 200 hrs for the engine and about half of that for cleaning the exhaust heat exchanger

I have never run a proper CHP system but I have thought about the HE coking up.
I run water injection in my car to keep the engine free of deposits from the veg oil I use.  I was thinking about doing the same with a HE to keep it clean. Injecting some water upstream so the deposits are washed away.  Now wether they will settle further down the system where the water dries out  or if you could put something like a trap in it that was easy to open and remove the deposits, I don't know. Maybe the system could just be flushed every so often after the HE so all the carbon is washed right through or again into a trap point that could be opened and resealed.

What I do know is water is effective in engines keeping them deposit free and in bit of exhaust pipes and flues for different burners I have played with that ran at less than clean outputs, water washes the buildup out easily.

Is there any engine out there than can run at even 4000 hrs service interval on WVO (or even diesel for that matter)?

Possibly.

A mate of mine bought a new truck a couple of years back. It was an Iveco that was Euro5 emission spec compliant. These trucks run Adblue which is popular in europe and getting far more popular here. Don't know if you guys in the states follow the protocall though and use the additive but anyway. 
It was a 7L engine that had a 12L sump. It ran synthetic oil but the service/ oil change interval was 100,000 KM.  The engine was warranted for 1M km at those service intervals.
Now I'm not exactly sure what the time/ mileage equation is but 60,000 mile oil changes sounds a long time between drinks to me.

This same friend used to own a few Taxis which here all run on LPG (  propane) . When you changed the oil on those things, it didn't look any different to when you put the stuff in. It was still a golden colour, not even near the ink black pitch that comes out of petrol and Diesel engines.  They say it's the wearing of the additives that wears an oil out but what they say as sales hype and what is real fact I don't know.

It does seem after doing a load of oil changes on these LPG fuels cars that the oil would have a lot longer life than with all that black carbon in it.  If that were the case, these truck engines when run constantly at the same load on gas would appear to have a good chance of going that far.

I also think that service intervals may be different in the industrial world or some of it. I know very large engines have an oil system where the oil is fed to the engine to be burnt at a specified rate and the sump is constantly replenished with new oil.  Perhaps on something like this a service is a de coke and change of airfilters  or injectors or something very different to what we might understand a service to be on a vehicle or tractor etc.

I'd almost gaurantee there is no engine that will do that on veg oil but there maybe some that do it on bunker oil such as in ships or large generating plants.

[Henry W]

I am not surprised that those Caterpillar engines have so many hours. Look at the build compared to what we are using. They are constantly running, and running at low speeds. They hold lots of oil and most likely have oil coolers, multiple filter systems and I bet they can switch over to another backup filter system for filter maintenance while the CHP units are still running. Like to see a Willem Lister CS  match this track record. It just won't happen.

Henry

[XYZER]

Wow! I didn't even see them packing the rocker arms with grease!

[BruceM]

Good one Dave, you had me grinning with the rocker arm grease packing.  I'll never forget that video.