This is in regard to the upgrade on the 4000 HP natural gas engine I am working with.
I went up this week and added additional data logging, so they can test more.
The engine has pre-combustion chambers that shoot a flame into the main cylinder to ignite that lean burn mixture. The engine was having two issues, it would start losing cylinders, which would cause the governor to open up and over-fuel the existing cylinders causing detonation and shutdown. They surmised it was a pre-combustion chamber issue, so did some redesign. The chambers were perpendicular with the cylinder, so they put them in at a 45 degree angle pointing down and shortened them up. The engine no longer detonates, but they are still losing cylinders during heavy loads. You can see it on the trends, one cylinder will go up in average peak pressure and the EGT will go down, it might do that for a few minutes then come back or not. Flames move at different speeds depending on the air / fuel ratio, so they are thinking some of the cylinders are lighting faster than others causing the pressure peak to occur closer to TDC.
So, it looks like on with the testing.
The customer has two more ordered, which are scheduled for installation next summer, hope they get the bugs out before there are more.
The turbo issue has not been addressed yet either, it is sitting there and the old turbo is running.
I went up this week and added additional data logging, so they can test more.
The engine has pre-combustion chambers that shoot a flame into the main cylinder to ignite that lean burn mixture. The engine was having two issues, it would start losing cylinders, which would cause the governor to open up and over-fuel the existing cylinders causing detonation and shutdown. They surmised it was a pre-combustion chamber issue, so did some redesign. The chambers were perpendicular with the cylinder, so they put them in at a 45 degree angle pointing down and shortened them up. The engine no longer detonates, but they are still losing cylinders during heavy loads. You can see it on the trends, one cylinder will go up in average peak pressure and the EGT will go down, it might do that for a few minutes then come back or not. Flames move at different speeds depending on the air / fuel ratio, so they are thinking some of the cylinders are lighting faster than others causing the pressure peak to occur closer to TDC.
So, it looks like on with the testing.
The customer has two more ordered, which are scheduled for installation next summer, hope they get the bugs out before there are more.
The turbo issue has not been addressed yet either, it is sitting there and the old turbo is running.
