Generator recomendations - Page 2

 



  You have me convinced that gas is a poorer option, I don't have
natural gas available, I'll look into the propane.
 I'm handy enough, ( the problem is wanting be :-). That's what I did
the first time, hurricane a day away, $13,000 of product in freezers,
better get a generator. We never lost power. I couldn't do what
many, many people down here do, The return their generators
back where they bought them after the threat is gone. Although
now that I think about it, I should have, I only got 4 hrs use
before it failed. I guess I got burned.
                            Thanks, Mike

 



  Minimal research so far but, does diesel fuel store well?
Email sent to NL about propane, no propane info on site.
                                     Thanks,      Mike

 



On the search term "Diesel fuel storage" I get 33 million Google hits.  Happy
reading!  The short version is that bugs can grow in diesel.  You might be able
to store the suff for decades without the slightest issue, or you could buy some
already infected stuff and have a mess within months.  As always, there are
folks who are happy to sell you addiitves...  I have been told that clean diesel
stored in airtight drums lasts forever, but have never tried it.  Where I (used
to) work, we ended up having a vender with a special truck suck all the fuel out
of our diesel generator tanks, treat it, filter it, and then return it.


Usually diesels only take liquid fuel.  Injectors don't work too well on gasious
fuel.

Vaughn

 



Good way to blow up a perfectly good diesel engine.... Just look at what
the cause was of the Gulf Oil Spill on the Drilling Vessel.  They had a
High Pressure (20K PSI) Natural Gas Blowout. That could have been
contained, except for, all that NG spread over then ship, and then got
into the Air Intakes for the BIG Diesel Gensets, that supplied ALL the
power for the ship, disaster, and Fire Pumps, and the Ship and Drill
Rigs Control and Computer Systems. The Gensets engines Ran Away, due to
over-fueled condition and destroyed themselves, and in that process they
blew every light bulb and motor on the Ship. When the Lights around the
Drill Rig exploded, it lit off the NG, causing the fire, and with no
Power to run ANYTHING onboard, there wasn't a thing that the crew could
do, but get off. The fire, ultimately, sank the ship, which caused the
Pipe to break off, and with no control over the BlowOUT Preventer, and
all that pressure coming up, the then, broken pipe, lots of Petroleum
products went into the water, and still is....

 

You wrote:

Reads like a lot of wild speculation.  Engines trip on overspeed long
before they tear themselves apart.  That shuts off all the fuel.  Many
such large engines also have air intake shut offs that trip shut to
prevent run-away on lubricating oil, so they would also shutdown on NG
at the intake.  Such trips are designed to prevent the engine from
'tearing itself apart'.

Replace all the fuel oil supplying an engine (by tripping the fuel
racks) with a very improbable 'perfect mix' of NG and air and you get
less power, not more.

In order to 'destroy' all the motors on the rig, you would have to
provide voltages several times their rating.  Even a run-away engine
can't do that generator regulators are better than that.  At most you
might get 120-140% of rated voltage.

In real life when you apply overvoltage to an incandescent light it
doesn't explode in a shower of sparks like the movies, it just gets
brighter, flashes and goes out.

Much more likely the gas explosion is what stopped the engines.  The
reports of survivors was that they felt/heard the explosion and that's
when the lights went out.  No one reported lights blowing out before the
explosion.

There have been several insights into the failure of the blowout
preventer, none of which hinge on your 'loss of power' statements.  The
wrong diagrams and some change that caused the test ram to activate
instead of the correct one.

Where did you get this 'scenario'?  Sounds like you just made it up.

daestrom