Lifetime engine data recording - Caterpillar (C32 ACERT)

[jfm]

This post is very much apropos nothing, just for those who might be interested, and I'm not making any point but if anyone has any thoughts I'd be interested to hear. A couple of months ago a question came up on here about what did lifetime Cat engine data look like, and I said I'd post mine. So the photo below shows the monitor screen recently on one of my engines, showing the lifetime history page.

One of the useful bits of data is Cat's nice readout of lifetime fuel burn. They then quote rebuild times in terms of fuel burned, https://safety.cat.com/cda/files/891374/7/C32 Marine Engine (RNC) - Maintenance Intervals.pdf, which Latestarter will tell us is the proper way to do it. My engines are 1.75 seasons old and have burned 30k litres (each) out of 455k litres for a top end overhaul, and 760k litres for a full rebuild. So that's 24 and 42 years to go, respectively .

If I didn't know the boat better I'd think that's a lot of idle hours and a low average load factor, but fact is by the time you have pootled out of harbour to open water, and back, and faffed 15 mins while tying up needing engines running for hydraulic power to winches, you get to these high idle figures. And I never start the engines and let them warm up before leaving the berth - I drive off 2 minutes after starting up, at idle rpm of course because I'm in the harbour, and I get some load on the engines as soon as I'm in open water so as to warm them faster. Also, my average seems to accord with Cat's service requirements: eg, and ref the MAN discussion on here recently on Deleted User's boat, CAT recommend cleaning the aftercooler at 1000hrs or 91k litres of fuel. I've done 320 hours and 31k litres, which extrapolates very close to 1000hours and 91k litres

These engines are Cat C32 ACERT, and the fuel burned is obviously one engine only (Edit - I think my link above and data are for the previous "non ACERT" version of the engine - I cant find the ACERT data but I expect it wont be materially different as regards pleasure boat use. Second edit: this doc says 2m litres fuel for full rebuild, which is >100 years for me, so I can relax. I'm perplexed that Cat quote 760k litres in one doc and 2 million in another, for essentially the same engine... https://marine.cat.com/cda/files/962700/7/brochure - cat c32 acert marine engine.pdf)

 

[burgundyben]

Fascinating insight.

One thing I'd love to do to Playtime is fit common rail motors and have access to data like that.

 

[jfm]

Fascinating insight.

One thing I'd love to do to Playtime is fit common rail motors and have access to data like that.

It has nothing to do with common rail Ben; everything to do with electronic fuel injectors. The C32 engine uses unit injectors, with fuel pressure just upstream of the electronically controlled injector created by a thwack of a camshaft, not a pump pressurising a common rail

 

[rafiki_]

The "Load Factor" element is interesting. I might have this completely wrong but is this data suggesting that the ave duty cycle is 28% of full energy availability?

 

[andy59]

Good info to be able to have , out of interest how many knots per hour does match make at idle , ( 23 litres an hour ? )

 

[jfm]

Good info to be able to have , out of interest how many knots per hour does match make at idle , ( 23 litres an hour ? )

At idle rpm she does about 7 knots but once the wheels are rotating she is burning more than 23/hour. Remember, a diesel engine is speed governed and the fuel system squirts in whatever fuel is needed to make the demanded rpm, 650rpm in the case of these engines at idle. So at idle rpm in neutral (just frictional losses) each engine burns about 9 litres/hour but at idle rpm in gear pushing 60 tonnes of big bertha each engine takes more like 13 litres/hour (iirc). The 23 you mention, 11.5 per side, is a blend of the 9 and the 13.

When full of fuel, running in gear at idle speed, 26 litres/hour, 7kts, 7300 litres, the rangeometer shows c 2000nm.

 

[jfm]

The "Load Factor" element is interesting. I might have this completely wrong but is this data suggesting that the ave duty cycle is 28% of full energy availability?

Yes, sort of. It is just the integration of load factor and time. True load factor is between 10 and 100% but then averaged second by second it comes out at 28%
I think load factor itself is simply actual fuel rate as % of WOT fuel rate, but I'm happy to be corrected on that. It must be something along those lines. Anyway, Cat's "allowed" average load factor for D rated engine is 50% so I'm well within that (last page of this https://marine.cat.com/cda/files/1377726/7/cat c32 acert spec sheet - commercial.pdf)

 

[rafiki_]

C

Yes, sort of. It is just the integration of load factor and time. True load factor is between 10 and 100% but then averaged second by second it comes out at 28%
I think load factor itself is simply actual fuel rate as % of WOT fuel rate, but I'm happy to be corrected on that. It must be something along those lines. Anyway, Cat's "allowed" average load factor for D rated engine is 50% so I'm well within that (last page of this https://marine.cat.com/cda/files/1377726/7/cat c32 acert spec sheet - commercial.pdf)

Yes, that makes sense. We used to "life" road car engines based on the duty cycle taken from road load data in a similar way.

 

[scubaman]

Yes, sort of. It is just the integration of load factor and time. True load factor is between 10 and 100% but then averaged second by second it comes out at 28%
I think load factor itself is simply actual fuel rate as % of WOT fuel rate, but I'm happy to be corrected on that. It must be something along those lines. Anyway, Cat's "allowed" average load factor for D rated engine is 50% so I'm well within that (last page of this https://marine.cat.com/cda/files/1377726/7/cat c32 acert spec sheet - commercial.pdf)

Fascinating stuff! I may be totally off the mark here but unless the average load factor comes directly from avg. fuel burn/max. fuel burn it would appear that the engine keeps a log of the actual data the figures are derived from? If this is the case, is there a way to access it. It would be, in a geeky way, interesting to view the profiles of a trip. In a similar way to a dive profile.

 

[burgundyben]

It has nothing to do with common rail Ben; everything to do with electronic fuel injectors. The C32 engine uses unit injectors, with fuel pressure just upstream of the electronically controlled injector created by a thwack of a camshaft, not a pump pressurising a common rail

Yes, of course, I use 'common rail' as a generic term when talking about electronically controlled engines rather that mechanical ones.

The best bit about yours is the ACERT technology, multiple injection events per combustion cycle. I do know that there is an injector available now with onboard pressure sensing that computes fuel management as the cylinder pressure rises. Fairly recently an editorial article in Diesel Progress International said that the battle to improve the efficiency of diesel engines had only just begun, everything so far has been easy grab low hanging fruit.

Excellent stuff.

 

[Hurricane]

Interesting
I haven't got a display like that available but there is a lifetime fuel burn readout on the standard engine head/controllers.
Last time I looked, I think it was over 50,000 litres per engine.
I'm in the airport waiting for a flight out to the boat.
It might be interesting to compare mine - with a fair bit of pootling.
I can probably post engine hours and total fuel burn from the engine management systems. Would there be any other interesting data?

 

[BartW]

interesting and re-assuring !

re another topic,
any tests done with the new curved fins ?

 

[Nick_H]

Interesting info. As you have a measure of total fuel burn, is there any reference to it in the service schedule?

I'm thinking that fuel filter life is proportional to the amount of fuel that's passed through them, not to engine hours or the simple passage of time, so do CAT recommend changing them every X,000 litres? I think there would also be a close correlation for air filters and other consumables. It's a small bug bear of mine that I throw away a thousand pounds worth of perfectly serviceable filters every year, just because they've been screwed to the side of an engine for a year.

 

[benjenbav]

Very interesting. What is the difference between "Average Fuel Consumption" and "Lifetime Average Fuel Consumption"?


(Apart from 0.75 L/H, of course )

 

[scubaman]

Very interesting. What is the difference between "Average Fuel Consumption" and "Lifetime Average Fuel Consumption"?


(Apart from 0.75 L/H, of course )

I'm guessing it's related to Trip (ie. after last trip reset).

 

[MYAG]

Very nice data and not available on MAN's AFAIK. Is it available on MTU's anyone? I'd love to know what my lifetime fuel burn is! Or perhaps its better I don't know.........

 

[jfm]

Last time I looked, I think it was over 50,000 litres per engine.

It's gotta be way more than that now Hurricane on the goodship JW. But perhaps best not to look, and not to multiply the number by €1.50

 

[jfm]

Very interesting. What is the difference between "Average Fuel Consumption" and "Lifetime Average Fuel Consumption"?


(Apart from 0.75 L/H, of course )

Yup as subaman said it is trip. Someone forgot to type the word "trip" when writing the firmware. As you can see, I've never reset the trips - that's because I have easy trip fuel data available on the Garmin screens

 

[jfm]

Interesting info. As you have a measure of total fuel burn, is there any reference to it in the service schedule?

I'm thinking that fuel filter life is proportional to the amount of fuel that's passed through them, not to engine hours or the simple passage of time, so do CAT recommend changing them every X,000 litres? I think there would also be a close correlation for air filters and other consumables. It's a small bug bear of mine that I throw away a thousand pounds worth of perfectly serviceable filters every year, just because they've been screwed to the side of an engine for a year.

Yes Nick - click the first link in my opening post and that lists service items by litres burned

 

[jfm]

Fascinating stuff! I may be totally off the mark here but unless the average load factor comes directly from avg. fuel burn/max. fuel burn it would appear that the engine keeps a log of the actual data the figures are derived from? If this is the case, is there a way to access it. It would be, in a geeky way, interesting to view the profiles of a trip. In a similar way to a dive profile.

It's definitely possible, if you have some elementary programming skills, which I don't. There might be an off-the-shelf product too. The instantaneous load factor % is there all the time on my N2k network as well as the engines j1939 network but Garmin haven't created a function and display field on the MFD to show average and trip average. Presumably because no-one wants this at consumer level (except us on this forum!). N2K is an open standard so someone could do it. I'm about to install a Maretron USB interface to the N2k bus so that I can do more things using a laptop and Maretron's N2K view and analyser, and that might allow it. Not sure yet

This Maretron stuff is great. I have bought boxes and boxes of it, like I have $10k of it sitting on my shelf here, but I need a few weeks to install and set it up. USB interfaces (links below), genset fuel monitoring, trim tab indicators N2k version, circuit status indicators (stuff running or idle displays on helm screens with user programmable legends and colours), etc

http://www.maretron.com/products/usb100.php
http://www.maretron.com/products/N2KAnalyzer.php
http://www.maretron.com/products/N2KView.php