Power Plant With 199,000 Munchkin Losing The 2nd of 2 Radiators.... More Pictures

JUGHNE

This boiler was installed in 2003 in a power plant to heat the diesel engine water jackets and by way of that the entire building. It is 4100 sq ft with 16' ceilings. All masonry walls with good R value under the rubber roof.

PS piping from a tube/shell HXE, kept the water at about 105 degrees.

Only 2 of the 4 engines used the water directly, the other two had their own tube/shell HXE for cooling water and oil.

The second 5 cylinder inline engine is being torn out to make room for new switch gear.
The 6 cylinder, whose alternator stator burned up, was removed last year and the loss of that EDR was noticed for half of the building.

Just to give an idea of the CI mass involved, the 6 cylinder was 70,000 pounds of iron.
The 5 is a little less. These are Fairbanks & Morse 32E's, that 6 was rated 420 HP @ 300 RPM.
It took a few days to get these up to temp, but then the place was warm.

The full length exhaust manifold, each cylinder and head had water jackets.
I can't even begin to guess the EDR of those items, but it was certainly enough to heat the building.

Now there is about 200' of 4" pipe and 4 large heat exchangers that the heated water is passing thru in a loop.
They added a FAF for temporary heat.





The engine, alternator and "silencer"-muffler, there was nothing silent about this thing you could hear it 10 blocks away on a quiet night. And that room never got cold.




An old piston used as an anvil, 13" dia and 34" tall.
A new connecting bearing....a rarity in this place.


The switch to bring on line, this is newer switch gear, but will not do 4160 volts.
A lot of iron for only 250 KW.
This engine was installed in early 50's, probably used then. These can be rebuilt forever if you have the money. 300 RPM


This is the 5 ton flywheel from the 6 cylinder, that guy cut it in half with a grinder, so I have been told.

This plant was our only source of power until the 1970's when we got a tie in from the grid.

We are on stand by with our other two engines as "peakers" and can power us up when the grid goes down a few times a year.

Today a 17 year old kid would probably not be allowed to operate this place.
But this was my first job out of high school in 1967. We had to generate 24/7/365.
After training I was left alone in the plant.
Bring up another engine as the load increased, shut one down when not needed.
Synchronize phase rotation manually and engage at the right time with a hand lever.
I thought it was fun.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Stuff was built good in the old days

PC7060

Pretty cool (and huge) generators! Bummer another one is being scrapped.  Did you get the recycled radiators connected up in the room where you all took out the 6 cylinder generator earlier this year?

JUGHNE

The radiators are still sitting unconnected.
The empty engine room will need a lot of changes as we are adding a "new" diesel Cat generator in the near future.
The rads will be installed by the "Village People" (employees) when that is done.

The temporary FAF is doing the majority of heating now.

BTW if anyone wants a 60,000 pound 2400 VAC generator, you probably could have this one if you remove it. Call soon before the torch and grinder go to work on it.

JUGHNE

The new generator will be almost 2MW.
The remaining units will do 1.3 MW.

We could face rationing this summer if we have to carry our own load.

2 MW will run the village pretty well in the summer.
Eventually we will have about 3.3 MW available.

One of the remaining opposed piston diesels will get a new generator wired for 4160 VAC. The other is already able to do 4160.

That 5 cylinder leaves the building to get room for the new switchgear needed.

Solid_Fuel_Man

Are you generating 4160 directly and your local distribution voltage is also 4160? Or is it stepped up to 7200? 

The opposed piston engines are very cool, they are supposedly making a comeback in the transportation diesel market due to their efficiency. 

How do the 300RPM FM gensets do as far as fuel/Kw compared to the CAT unit going in? I love this stuff! 

Thanks for sharing, don't spare any details!

JUGHNE

We generate and distribute 2400 delta now.

We are rebuilding the system up to the 7200 wye insulation standards.

But when all said and done we will have a 4160 wye system.

To jump to 7200 would require all distribution transformers to be changed.
Transformers are hard to get now and pricey.

Our system might cover only one square mile with maybe 200-250 meters.

I will try to get more details on KW/gal.

JUGHNE

More pictures, for anyone interested, before it is completely removed.


Nameplate, I have been told that the "32"'s were introduced in 1932.
This was installed in the 50's.


Switchgear with ratings for the 6 & 8 cylinder opposed piston engines.

Cooling pipe from that 1950's 5 cylinder engine.
As the cooling tower was not functioning, these all run on raw cold water injected into the cooling piping and then excess run down the street gutter.
We are on emergency stand by generation. People are glad to have the power on when other town may be out for days.
We have pretty friendly water here. I thought this piping would be really bad.


Top half of crank bearing, "Babbit" bearings.

Cooling piping by pass.

Exhaust port on one cylinder.


Cheater pipes on all wrenches needed.


Flywheel end of crankshaft, note the oil slinger ringer around the crank.
This flywheel came out in one piece, weighted just over 3 tons.


Cover over the top half of bearing, the little flip door allowed you to check that the slinger ring was turning, if not then you nudged it with a stick.
There was a slinger between each cylinder. This was the worst one to have to start as the unguarded flywheel was spinning at 300 RPM next to it.

More available if anyone wants.

ratio

JUGHNE said:

More available if anyone wants.

Yes, please.

Solid_Fuel_Man

Yes, this old stuff is great. We have a privately owned diesel power plant which is on standby now as well. Slated to be torn down to proximity to a river and 1000s of gallons of diesel and bunker oil for a steam turbine. 

JUGHNE

Each bearing journal has it's own oil sump, the crank gets a splash lube, the crankshaft has the slinger rings that pick up oil for the crank journals.
The crankshaft was cut in half for removal.







Air inlet channels air under the oil sumps.
Woodward governor used on the 32E inline engines.
Jump down to the basement for the Munchkin 199 .


8 cylinder opposed piston, straight diesel, 960 HP @ 720 RPM, tested to 784 KW.


Old oil reclaimer/recycler, the older engines used the oil one pass and then it was piped into the hoppers on the right side of the picture.
The round tank has element to heat the oil and then a centrifugal spinner.
The oil then was pushed thru filters and then reused.
This system would not treat detergent oil, so the set up is now headed to scrap. Not used for years as all engines have their own oil filter.




Tube in shell exchanger from Munchkin to engine cooling/heating water.



P/S piping using closely spaced tees.

I think they will go and get the real jack hammer from the street dept.
I think they will get under the base to saw off the studs and drag the entire piece out the door.


6 cylinder opposed piston engine, dual fuel. NG was added to the air intake so as use less diesel.
The Woodward governor that regulated the NG and pilot fuel mix.


Sorry to jump around so much, but it is just the way the pics loaded.

Jamie Hall

OK. NOW I'm jealous!

PC7060

Looks cool.  I’ll be out there in early Feb, I’m going to see if I can check out the old Schweitzer’s store in Columbus. Have you gotten much cold weather or snow?

JUGHNE

Every little town up and down "THE" highway is jealous of us here whenever there is a grid outage. 69K feeder runs along the highway and will drop out with wind, lighting, 60' pole snapping from ice load etc.
Neighboring towns and rural were out for up to a week a few years ago.
24 hours is not uncommon.

We typically get on line within 20 minutes.

We were too stubborn to give up our plant years ago.
There were several attempts to either sell or hand over to some Power agency but there were enough people who saw the advantage of keeping our own.
In the 20's & 30's all small villages had a power plant.

The Consumers Public Power District, now Nebraska Public Power District came down that above mentioned Highway and put substations in most towns and the plants were abandoned.

We got a substation in the mid 70's, today get all power thru the sub...if they have it.

FWIW, we are the only state that has public power only, no private companies.
Usually a good thing.

We started with maybe a single cylinder and a 2 cylinder in the early 1920's. Maybe 150-180 KW.
Started at 6 AM and shut down at 8 or 10 PM....why would you need power after you went to bed??

The single cylinder was a "Hot Head" in that you spotted the piston just over center coming down and lite an explosive charge in the head. That would roll it over once or twice and hopefully start.
All start with 200 PSI compressed air now.

Our remaining 2 OP engines will be stressed to carry the summer load.
The 2 MW Cat will be welcome. The Cat comes from town of about 2000 who is giving up their power plant.

JUGHNE

Pat, Columbus did not get much for snow compared to the rest of the state.
Up here we got 15 to 24". More to the west.

You will enjoy the Schweitzer store, the guy loves to show it off.
Can't tell you his name or number, but everyone will know who to call.

Solid_Fuel_Man

I actually looked into privately owning a 1950s diesel power plant. Get paid for standby based on Mega Watt output and amount of time you can go from 0 to 100% of stated MW output. 

The plant which used to be owned by the local power company before deregulation was so antiquated and would take so much money to turn a profit was a poor investment. My job, if I so chose, would be to man the place and keep things in order. 

They lost their standby title due to not being able to start several of the engines. They were all WWII Naval engines, Fairbanks Morse if I remember correctly. 2 stroke, and I could easily stand inside a cylinder liner. Operated in the 300-900 RPM range, they also had a bunker oil steam turbine part of the building which used to run 24/7. The diesels were just for peak loads, and were kept warm via a shell and tube HX off the bunker oil boilers. Started on compressed air. 

It was a long time ago, I wish I had some pictures. 

JUGHNE

Posted previously; crankcase sumps, the crank/connecting rod got lube from splash in the sump. Also there are the remains of 1/4" tubing that provided oil to the main bearings crank journals that had the pick up slinger rings.

Engine nearly intact showing the 20 oiler pumps, directly behind the governor.
Each cylinder had 4 double action oil pumps in addition to whatever sump/splash oiling was going on. You can see the round sight glass that showed the oil level in the pump case. There was a vertical rod/crank arm that worked off of the crankshaft and ran the pumps drive axle.

You see a hand crank, connected to the drive axle, on the left end of the long rectangular box with the plexiglass covers. Each of the 20 pumps were double action drippers. You could see the drips going into a thimble sized cup, then the second pump would deliver the oil to the appropriate inlet on the cylinder. If the cup overflowed then you would know that that oil line was plugged. Or if no oil delivered to the cups then a pump problem.
Before start up you would prime the oil system with maybe 15 turns of the hand crank. Pretty fool proof oiling system. They said there was only maybe 40 gallons of oil in the entire engine including the filter/heater.

Bones of the engine, crank cut up, oiler box, ladder and flywheel jack.
If you were good at shutting down, you would shut off fuel oil, go up on catwalk and wait for the right moment as engine coasted down to just a few rpm's.
Then at the right moment and the correct cylinders you open the decompression ports and the engine would spot itself ready for the next start.

If you missed the mark then you walked the flywheel to the correct orientation.
When starting, compressed air would enter only 2-3 cylinders that were just over top dead center. That would roll the engine maybe 3 times, usually would start.
If not then jack the flywheel around again to the right spot.

If not spotted correctly there was a chance the engine would start and run backwards. I was told it could go to run away speeds if that happened. I believed it and never tried it.
You hoped you were not in the dark without power from another engine to run the air compressor.....never happened in the 2-3 years I worked there.

Years later, being on the town board, I pushed to buy an engine powered jack hammer compressor in the event of air loss.

On one engine, we did have the drive shaft to the alternator come loose from the crankshaft and start to walk the rotor away from the engine. The operator noticed the brushes arcing on the contact rings and changed over to another engine. After jacking the rotor back in place, he installed a probe on the guard rail a 1/2" away from the flywheel to see if it ever moved.
6' 5 ton flywheel at 300 RPM might have left the building.



Crankcase outside and leaving the building...out of order.

These in line E32's could not pass the emission testing required by the EPA.
IIRC, we could only use them in extreme emergencies.

The opposed pistons pass as they had catalectic converters installed.
But because of the basic design of the in lines they would never pass.
The crankcase was not unlike old cars with the "road draft tubes".
These things all run but a few hours a year.
But the wisdom of the EPA dictates your life....don't we all know it.

The front end loader and the road grader in the back ground of the last pictures might run16 hours a day in snow removal and probably produce more diesel emissions then any of these old engines.

"Elvis has left the building"

Sad to see them go.