And we think the S195's are noisey. Listen to this detroit 6-71 genset.

[Henry W]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efj6hu-vOZ4&feature=related

It sort of makes our engines sound pretty quiet.


Henry

[mobile_bob]

think that is bad?

try out a 12v149 running at 2700rpm!
w/o mufflers, only 8" diameter stacks of 10" length

bob g

[Henry W]

I found this 12v149.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD4DJCJjk9A

That is LOUD!!!

What do you use for hearing protection when working on these?

Henry

[mobile_bob]

typically they are governed for 1800 of course for generator use, up to 2100 or so for other uses
but for oil well fracturing they spin them up to 2700rpm which is insanely loud

i have seen them pushing 8" diameter plumes of fire 8 ft into the air under full load when something goes wrong.

ear protection???   huh???

ear plugs, with muffs over the top and it still rattles your brains, much like a top fuel dragster nitro blast.

bob g

[cognos]

Wow... dat stuff's loud...

I used to work daily with a 15,000 HP steam turbine, that was used to drive an air blower (4-7 MSCF/hr at 25psi)...

7200 RPM, 900 PSI inlet, 45 PSI outlet. Each machine was the size of a minivan...

Unloaded, it was so quiet, just a whine, you could carry on a normal conversation 5 feet from it... and you could set a wine glass on it full of water, you would detect no vibration... loaded, it would howl pretty loud...

Mind you, the boiler house that made the steam for it was deafening. Literally. You didn't enter that place without plugs and muffs. Made communication difficult - you learned sign language...

I didn't know how good I had it!

[cognos]

Ya - those frac boys are all deaf!

[Henry W]

Bob, That would be the engine I would like to have just in case one of my neighbors start acting up. I think it would straighten him out for good. I know some of my neighbors would get a kick out of it by disturbing his daytime nap.

So far so good since the last time he acted up.

Henry

[mobile_bob]

i only got to spend a year in the oil field as a mechanic maintaining fracturing pumps

usually did not go out on jobs, but went out on a couple

on was fairly large by sw kansas gaswell standards

an 8" well casing, with a tree attached,, each of the three tree legs attached to schedule 160 four inch iron pipe
with hammer unions, a 10ft section requires 4 men to carry.

there were three banks of frac pumps, about 75k hydraulic hp iirc

one blender to mix the and feed the pumps

270k lbs of graded sand, another 40 or 50 frac tanks full of gelatin, all set up and ready to go down that hole

took 7 minutes at 8k psi minimum to put it all down the hole,

btw those frac tanks hold something like 5k gallons of water, to which the gelling agent is mixed into.

the sound is incredible, the ground is much like a cat 7 earthquake as you cannot walk anywhere withing a hundred feet
of the well head, those 4inch pipes danceing a foot off the ground, until the blender screens off (which he did twice in the run)
screening off is when nothing but solid sand hits the pumps and then all those iron pipes dance 2-4 ft up off the ground and people
scatter like bats out of hell.

anybody that appreciates diesel engines should take the opportunity to witness a well fracturing job first hand if possible, even if
you have to pay someone to allow you to be there!

i would pay a hundred bucks to see that job again!

once the job has started those engines cannot be shut down for any reason, they must put out max hp for the duration of the job
because the engineers spec a certain volume and pressure down the hole and that requires x amount of hp, generally there is not
much excess power on site, so you literally have millions of dollars of equipment at stake and things can go very wrong.

that job had one twin pump set driven by twin 16v71's which are made up of two V8 blocks doweled together, during the job
one of the engines broke its doweling and began to squirt hot oil out everywhere, the blocks twisting back and forth, it was friggin
horrendous to walk up on and see at face level!  i reported it to the treater who has control of all the engine's on one console
and was told he had no hp to spare,,, bob just stay away from that engine!

i did, and miraculously the engine survived.

i still get a boner remembering those engine's screaming their collective asses off.



bob g

[Shipo]

I babysit two Cummins generators with the engine Onan KTA50.  They are inside a warehouse and in there the noise is really loud, although, I like to take off my earmuff when they are shutting down to heard  for a couple of seconds all the mechanical gear and valve moving inside. I know that is a bad habit.