And easier to find a diesel engine with useable grunt at 1500 rpm.
Diesels are much more thermodynamicly effcient than petrols and don't produce much waste heat unless they are being asked to work. But as you say waste not want not.
Yeah, an interesting project.
There sholdnt be anything preventing you from getting it rnning, as long as it works. With 3 machine shop tools on a 65kva gen you wont need regulation, so even if the reg & exciter were toasted you could run the main machine's field off an unregged supply such as a car alternator (with its regulation removed).
NT
As long as the main gen has continuity on its windings and the bearings work, it should be perfectly runnable. Even if the rest of the kit were toast you could run the main machine off a fixed excitation voltage, as theres no way you'd need regulation to run 3 motors off a 65kva genset. So I wouldnt let the worries about the regulator etc stop you building it.
NT
I have put a few pictures on my website showing how dirty it is at the moment and the excitation details - as far as I can see.
how many external connections does it have? the big capacitor is most likiely on the input from the small gen.
With your skill & experience plus some help on the electrics this should be entirely doable.
NT
Geo
That rings a bell. We had such a setup in the machine room at BRA01 to drive the 2980. It never worked though, and you wouldn't call a 2980 "medium sized" either. One of those little things - I knew it was there, but never actually saw it, just heard it cursed!
Andy
We had one too. In fact, when I last looked we still had it. It was installed in 1976 to drive a an ICL 2960 installation (ICL insisted we had it). It was installed in an outbuilding, and just ran...and ran...and ran. It then ran our VAXcluster ten years later, and if it's not still there, it hasn't been gone for all that long.
I remember ICL diddled us (mainly incompetence, which was the norm for them). After six years someone noticed this thing hadn't been serviced, but ICL had been charging us a large sum over the years for its maintenance. I think we got the money back and took out a contract with the manufacturers.
One of the most amazingly reliable pieces of kit I have ever seen. It ran for six years without stopping, and then for a year at a time between maintenance checks. It was from Mawdsley, I'm pretty sure.
ICL were the bane of my life for ten years...don't even get me onto the CPU hardware design flaw they refused to fix, which involved me writing microcode patches...
And red diesel/heating oil is available for legal use in them. I don't think duty free petrol is available.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember George saying something like:
Excellent idea, and one I'm pursuing, trying to find a big 3ph alternator cheaply locally, as the carriage costs for such a thing are horrendous. I too have noticed the dirt cheap prices of 3ph kit.
The CHP setup is the way to go, for sure.
Regarding the engines, the P3 is only 2.3L, which in itself isn't a real problem, as you won't be pulling out anywhere near the max capacity of the alternator, but I can't find any figures for the P3 itself. I can only guess at its output at 1500rpm from my looking into using a VW 2L road diesel engine for the same purpose. At 1500rpm the VW engine is producing 100Nm of torque, compared to its peak of 102Nm just 500rpm higher - in this it's fairly characteristic of diesels, producing a lot of low down grunt and rapidly running out of steam above that. The power curve is disappointing for this purpose - at 1500rpm it's only producing ~15kW, rising to ~40kW @4800rpm. This is why I mentioned the camshaft above - the same engine produced by VW for stationary power has a different camshaft (indeed, as do all of them) for plant applications, maximising the breathing for the steady speed they will be doing.
Anyway, it's like comparing apples and oranges - the P3 is an ancient design and will probably be less good than the VW, but it's a stationary engine, so you might be in with a shout and who knows, it might produce more power at 1500 rpm than the VW.
Regarding the direct coupling - don't fack about, go to a decent power transmission stockist and tell them what you're up to and what they recommend. There's a range of couplings you could use and a range of prices too, but you need to get it right. Fecking dangerous if you don't.
Red diesel (35sec oil) isn't duty free it just has less duty, 12p/l IIRC. Heating oil, kersosene, parafin, (28sec oil) for domestic heating has no duty and VAT is at 5% but that probably alters if you use it for a gen set. VAT I'd expect to be 17.5%. Might be worth asking HMR&C what the situation is WRT 28sec oil used in a genset.
Of course it would be better to get an engine that is happy on SVO (straight vegetable oil) and talk nicely to your local chippy. Though you would need a waste transport licence and be a registered waste handler...
You can claim back the duty you pay on petrol if you jump through the right hoops with HMR&C.
So how come its 45p/liter ten?
Mostly the base cost of the oil. With road fuel duty at 50p/l (ish) and VAT at 17.5% heating oil should be below 40p/l.
Just checked one of my regular online quote places and they come out at
43.08 and I can normally beat them by 2p/l locally. That site came out 41.06 on the 24th Oct. It's not a simple relationship from crude to retail price, availabilty and demand affect it as well. It's just been cold and winter is approaching so I suspect demand is quite high, this tends to push the price up a few p/l.
Really? Last time I dealt with this (vintage tractors) the whole non- road petrol supply chain was being withdrawn owing to lack of demand (and potential for abuse). You must (AFAIK) pay duty on fuel _unless_ it's dyed to make it traceable, and dyed petrol was going out of production.
I dug about on the HMR&C website and got the impression it was a paper exercise but I can see where you are coming from with dyes etc. Note I said "claim back" as opposed to not paying it in the first place.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Andy Dingley saying something like:
Aviation spirit used be blue, iirc, and I don't see that going out of production. [1] There's certainly a mechanism in place for reclaiming duty paid on that if you're going abroad with it - I would think there would still be a demand for that, and it's essentially the same procedure.
[1] My Minivan ran great on it.
Hi all,
As a user of AVGAS (100/110 octane low leaded version) it is blue and smells wonderful 8-))
There is duty & VAT on it and currently it is anywhere from 146p/l to
170 p/l PLUS VAT. However it is rumoured to be on the way out as the lead contaminates the plant and so noone wants to make it as it needs a dedicated bit of kit and is a 'small' market - hence the price!The Swedish (I think) have got unleaded AVGAS that performs like
100/110LL (I am told) but there is no duty relief on it and is likely to be more expensive.And yes you can claw back duty if you 'export' it across the channel (or as I do here just not pay it in the first place - AirBP have a system)
The Nomad
When I was on Shackletons AVGAS was 130/135 Octane and although it ran very well in my Triumph T 110. It was reputed to burn out valves. It did not effect mine so as far as I was concerned it was perfect and very cost effective.
But I digress. I have just found that the Perkins P3 has a power of
34 hp / 1500 rpm. As it is quoted at this rpm it may well be that this is the rpm at which it is happy. Today I found two 8 ft. pieces of very heavy, - not channel, but I section which will be just as good as there is plenty of room for nice fat bolts. I am in the process of painting it a nice tasteful British Racing Green. 1 shop I have found in Norwich has AVRs which can be adapted to any (?) alternator. The only problem is that it is 40 quid. OUCH. Anyone got a simple circuit?Regards George.
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