At the telco I worked for up north from 79-89, we had a vapour phase cooled
emergency diesel generator setup.
1st and last one I ever saw. A maze of ball cocks, manually operated valves
and also a 3 inch OD copper vent tube,
running from the basement, right up through the inside of the equipment office,
to the roof. It was made by BMC,
British machine Corp. The generator bolted to it was by Stamford, in Stamford
CT. Other than commercial AC power
failures, we would fire it up once a month for 2 hrs. During the monthly
routine, we would bypass the Vapour phase
cooling, and instead route loads of cold, 40 deg F city water through it.
Then drained it to a drain in the basement floor.
It came out damn hot through that industrial rubber hose, steam, etc. Then it
cleaned out the contaminants.
The system normally ran on city water as coolant. Funny thing was, it had no
radiator at all. The steam condensed, then
routed back into the block. The entire mess actually sat on the rectangular,
thick steel walled diesel fuel tank,
aprx 14 inchs tall. My desk was directly above it, on the next floor. The 3
inch cu vent tube + exhaust pipe, both ran
up the 24 ft tall wall..with a safety heavy meshed shield around it.... since
both ran stupid hot. The entire floor would
vibrate, stupid loud, couldn’t hear a thing.
We finally got rid of it. Replaced with a bigger gen set, in its own sound
proof building in the back parking lot, dead quiet.
Standard diesel eng with water cooling + rad. Stamford supplied the 3 phase
generator bolted to the diesel. Stamford
generators are used at every telco office I worked at through out the province.
Zero problems in 34 years...they just
run like the energizer bunny..zero maintenance. Some of the smaller offices
and esp microwave sites, we used
deutz air cooled diesel engines. They are designed for prime power at sites,
where we had to generate our own power
24-7-365. In those cases, 3 were used, and cycled through every 4 hrs. For
back up power, like a normal site, that
had commercial ac power available, the air cooled german diesels used a
heater in the oil sump..since no other way to
keep it warm. Normal water cooled engs used a .75kw-1.5 kw or 3 kw, and
sometimes bigger, block heater, to keep it
warm. Buildings they were in were also kept heated.
Vapor phase cooled engs are a nice concept, but are bit of a pita to maintain.
Never seen one since.
Jim VE7RF
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