Tier 4 and beyond?

stinkycat · Jan 8, 2014

DMiller said:
LNG tanks for the railroads is due to lack of refueling stations not just to consumption rate(which is notably higher). LNG has less btu value and is extremely dry, Cummins tried it out a few years ago on St. Louis Metro busses, nothing but grief, engine life less than 150,000miles, considerable catastrophic failure rates from extreme wear in critical areas on the cylinders and valve seats. I am not a believer in the DEF fed tier 4 systems either, use considerably more fuel to do the same work so has to be making more emissions of something out the stack at least in total tonnage with the Urea coming from Natural Gas conversion where their major release material is CO2 cannot be good either.

Worked for Waukesha engines lots of years ago and we had natural gas engines the ran for years without shut down in the SoCal oil fields we had anywhere from .5 to 1.7 mw gen sets running 24/7 with no problems, Cat and Cummins tried to compete and couldn't. Valve and valve seats and burned pistons. I left that industry in 85. One of the railroads in the LA area has switch running CNG

DMiller · Jan 8, 2014

I can remember the Waukesha and Hercules engines in the oil patch of OK in the 80's, had thousands of hours steady running on well head gas, check the oil running and add as needed, some I know ran for years with few shut downs. Those were well built and designed for dry gas consumption. Current employer has a few Cat standby diesels, had a failure on one of these brand new. Shot a rod thru the side, parts of pi$$-can on the floor with the rod chunk running on diesel but had intended to run them on Line Natural Gas, don't see the potential in them.

DMiller · Jan 9, 2014

Had red fuel in it plus orange A-freeze, small fire until the A-freeze flooded the hot spot.

Mjrdude1 · Jan 9, 2014

Ouch! No part of that picture is cheap. Did it over rev too? The rod bolt looks stretched. Just a real bad day and expensive too.

DMiller · Jan 9, 2014

No overspeed, dang thing was actually hunkering down like a locked up dog, then it let go as fuel pressure got too severe.

This is more to scale.

Generator was at full 2.2MW load, engine had less than a hour run time.

John C. · Jan 10, 2014

Was it a brand new engine or a rebuild?

DMiller · Jan 10, 2014

Delivered that week, brand new. Spun no.1 main, starved the rods on that journal. These monsters came in as T4, urea tank has to be heated as is 300 gallon is a mess when it rocks up. The fuel tank is only 750 gallon and good for only 23 hours when the low level of 25 gallon shuts the engine down, lack of DEF(urea) and the engine drops to idle then shuts down, best we can tell at full load the urea use is .2gal to 1gal of fuel. Fuel consumption on a previous install of similar sized Cat gensets was 26 hours per 750gal tank. Extra energy to keep the system heated adds more cost to the units.

Maurice Muenks · Jan 10, 2014

Best solution I think is to remanufacture the old stuff that ran forever! Most of it grandfathers in until you replace it, then the trouble starts.

DMiller · Jan 10, 2014

And that is where they get you, they stop making spares or repair parts or simply go out of business from lack of equipment sales then you have the conundrum, can't deal with them, can't do without, almost as bad as a wife.

John C. · Jan 10, 2014

Brand new motor is on the manufacturer. I would guess there are plenty of problems with the first batch of Tier 4 final motors. Wait about three years before replacing old iron if possible. The manufacturers seem to want to do their R&D on other peoples money any more. By that time most of the bugs should be worked out and possibly this is such a disaster that the politicians will feel the heat and change the law.

steve.k · Jan 10, 2014

The off-road is a small player in the grand scheme of emissions? Liebherr told us they produce just over 1000 machines a year? Cat & komatsu likely double that but when you compare that to trucks and cars it's minimal. Why even worry about the footprint of these machines? It's ridiculous and knowing the environment these work in even a basic machine has a hard time staying together! C'mon politicians get your head on!!!

wilko · Jan 11, 2014

John C. said:
Brand new motor is on the manufacturer. I would guess there are plenty of problems with the first batch of Tier 4 final motors. Wait about three years before replacing old iron if possible. The manufacturers seem to want to do their R&D on other peoples money any more. By that time most of the bugs should be worked out and possibly this is such a disaster that the politicians will feel the heat and change the law.

By the time Tier 4 is debugged Tier 5 (or 6, or 7) will be mandated, the politicians who force this stuff in answer to radical greens and have only contempt for the sort of people who own and run heavy machinery. Grrrrr, rant over.

coalrulz · Jan 11, 2014

DMiller said:
View attachment 112763

Had red fuel in it plus orange A-freeze, small fire until the A-freeze flooded the hot spot.

Are you thinking the red fuel had something to do with the failure?

DMiller · Jan 11, 2014

No, just explaining the staining.

ih100 · Jan 11, 2014

DMiller; These engines also have a particulate filter said:
So do I. You just echoed some of what I wrote. Not being smart, but it's nitrous oxide, NOX, that's produced by high injection pressures and combustion pressures, the lean burn is a bi-product. NOX is highly carcinogenic. I know it's a pain dealing with the high-tech engines, but it's here to stay. Until we change fuels and find something that's cheap and burns clean. Not everyone will be using filters, some are trying to up the injection pressure for a really lean burn and just using DEF dosing. You'll see a few variations before the final solution.

DMiller · Jan 11, 2014

You'll see a few variations before the final solution.

That's the part I fear most, the oddball fixes that fail more than fix and we pay the cost. Saw it in autos from the 60's here, EPA kept adding on machinery to try to fix the last fix to fix the first modification for lower emissions. Net result cars had to become lighter to drive fewer pounds down the road to consume less fuel while all the 'fixes' continued to use more. I still hold that burning more fuel to go the same distance even as it is less 'harmful' emissions it is more emission by ton or tonne so we gain nothing but more devices to fail. The EFI engines with programmable logic was probably THE invention to fix most of the EPA flubs while reducing emissions yet they insist to maintain the old equipment that did little which the European markets do not use. Europe gets 35-50mpg(equivalent) with the same auto frame that we can barely accomplish 25-35mpg due to EPA equipment, their line of equipment is not allowed in the States without the US EPA garbage in tow.

ValleyFirewood · Jan 11, 2014

ih100 can you explain more on NOx?

I dug out my college books (diesel tech and auto tech) out of curiosity.. NOx are Nitric Oxide (NO) and Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2). Also says "The generic term NOx does not include nitrous oxide."

I'm not a chemist nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn :tong

Just when you said that N2O was a carcinogen it got me wondering. How could it be used at the dentist?

John C. · Jan 12, 2014

What I have been told was the NOX refers to oxides of nitrogen and is more than one compound. Higher temperatures and pressures during combustion are what creates these compounds. Cooled exhaust gas recirculation seems to be the most current add on to diesel engines to counteract those high temperatures.

This seems to have provided a trade off because higher firing temperatures are what burns up hydrocarbon particles that everyone is claiming cause respiratory problems. Diesel particulate filters have been added to capture those pollutants. The burn cycle used in the filters is where fuel is injected into the filter and lit to create the heat to burn the particulates in a low pressure situation so the NOX is not generated.

On the machines I have experience with, the systems seemed to work pretty well. The problems have been in applications and operator training. Operators that let the filters get plugged has been the biggest issue so far on equipment. I have heard of extensive issues in applications that require large time frames of idling, such as municipal fleet equipment. So far I haven't seen it to be a problem in medium and large off highway equipment.

ih100 · Jan 12, 2014

As John said. I didn't say N2O was carcinogenic, just the nitrous oxides. Mind you, if was, it wouldn't stop some of our dentists using it. As for the cars, everything in Europe burning petrol (gas) is fitted with a catalytic converter now. What extras do you have fitted in the states? Higher combustion temperatures cause formation of nitrous oxides, which aren't captured by the particulate filter. hence DEF injection.

steve.k · Jan 12, 2014

From what I understand as you lean out the engines you get more n2o. This is what they are trying to dilute with the def. I think it's all a farce! One trip from Calgary to Dallas with a 767 likely releases more of this than all our dozers combine in one year! It's a joke and by the time you get one system working they change the rules.

Tier 4 and beyond?

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