Porthandbuoy
Well-known member
Think we’ll ever see engines like this in our boats? Or has it been tried before?
Opposed Piston Diesel Engines Are Crazy Efficient
Opposed Piston Diesel Engines Are Crazy Efficient
Opposed piston engines
- Thread starter Porthandbuoy
- Start date
38mess
Well-known member
I think they might be a bit overcomplicated for a small boat, best stick to a conventional lump, I remember in the distant past working on the deltic engines, fantastic engine, but so hard to work on.
Poignard
Well-known member
Kukri
Well-known member
Used to be found in Commer vans, as I recall?
Commer TS3 - Wikipedia
Descended like the Napier Deltic from the WW2 Junkers diesel aircraft engine .
Junkers Jumo 205 - Wikipedia
The Chieftain tank had an opposed piston Diesel engine but it seems to have been hopelessly unreliable.
Poignard got in before me with the Doxford.
There was a Doxford Song; it was a game at parties where marine engineers were present as long as they could find six girls to act the chorus.
The Doxford was known to engineers from rational European nations as “the one with the rubber crankshaft...” here is why:
Commer TS3 - Wikipedia
Descended like the Napier Deltic from the WW2 Junkers diesel aircraft engine .
Junkers Jumo 205 - Wikipedia
The Chieftain tank had an opposed piston Diesel engine but it seems to have been hopelessly unreliable.
Poignard got in before me with the Doxford.
There was a Doxford Song; it was a game at parties where marine engineers were present as long as they could find six girls to act the chorus.
The Doxford was known to engineers from rational European nations as “the one with the rubber crankshaft...” here is why:
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wombat88
Well-known member
I thought there was a Fiat one in the '30s? Certainly a Scottish one, the Arrol Johnson, early 20th century . Both petrol though.
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC
Well-known member
The days of reciprocating engines is coming to an end.
Gary Fox
N/A
Every few years someone reinvents the design, but nobody is interested. The practical problems outweigh the theoretical gains. Piccy is the Deltic timing gears. 
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dunedin
Well-known member
Yes, whilst not practical range for all yet, electric drives will predominate in future
mjcoon
Well-known member
Must have been designed by the same chaps who came up with the Antikythera mechanism !
Slowboat35
Well-known member
Dream on!
Gary Fox
N/A
Maybe when the government has built some power stations and a new National Grid to charge all those batteries. Until then, electric powered cars will remain on the fringes, unless your country has hydro-electric like Norway.
Sailing content: One of the largest square-riggers, the Statsraad Lemkuhl of Bergen, has recently been fitted with so-called 'hybrid' propulsion. The expense was astronomical, and the Norwegian government and trans-national Green Energy corporations paid for it.
Unfortunately, the classification society DNV insisted on proper diesel power in addition, as she takes hundreds of cadets on ocean voyages. Make of that what you will...
Kukri
Well-known member
The er... bigger ... picture:
‘Transitional fuels are capturing the regulatory agenda and incentives’: Maersk - Splash247
‘Transitional fuels are capturing the regulatory agenda and incentives’: Maersk - Splash247
Gary Fox
N/A
Those massive boxboats must still be the least polluting way of moving stuff, per ton, per mile though.
It's impossible for a layman, me at least, to tell how much of that piece is practical marine engineering likely to be adopted, and how much is big organisations being seen to be green.
Presumably huge engine-room alterations will be needed, or even dedicated new future ships.
LittleSister
Well-known member
Kukri
Well-known member
Yes, per ton mile it is much the best.
There is a spat brewing between Maersk (and DFDS) on the one hand and CMA CGM on the other.
Maersk look to me to be entirely serious about moving to a carbon free state. I am myself convinced that ammonia is, at the moment, the best way to carry hydrogen - “blue” or otherwise - around the place, and Maersk are doing the right thing. Bio ethanol is less clear cut.
CMA CGM have gone for methane which is a bit of a fraud, as methane itself is a dreadful greenhouse gas and of course burns* to produce CO2.
* most of it does. “Methane slip” is a big issue which the methane lobby don’t like to talk about.
I have no connection with Maersk.
Tranona
Well-known member
This link brings it all back from my youth. one of my first jobs in the early 1960s was supervising the removal of machinery from the old Ford Dagenham tractor plant. The contractor was TW Ward who ran a fleet of Commers. I remember the scream of the scavenging blowers, which as the link says killed the engine for coach and bus applications. It was even more exciting riding in the can sitting next to the engine.
JumbleDuck
Well-known member
The wholesale move to electric heating - new gas connections are shortly to be banned - won;t help one little bit either. An honest government (of any hue) would be announcing the building of new nuclear stations at the same time as they announced phasing out of fossil fuels.
JumbleDuck
Well-known member
We Scots have been watching in dismay the attempts of CMAL to introduce two new dual fuel ferries. Which are years late, 100% over budget - and will do three-quarters of stuff-all to reduce CO2 emissions, not least since, ever they ever actually run on LNG, they will requite two tankers full per day to come by road from SE England to supply the stuff.
D
Deleted member 36384
Guest
Royal Dutch Shell announced to the market last week it's new strategy to be carbon neutral by 2050 for all of it's products including end users. All the IOCs have some form of commitments to reduce carbon, but RDS is the first to state the carbon neutral approach. They stated that it is their customers asking for this solution as well as the consumer market. RDS will reduce oil production by 2% per year and increase gas production as a transition strategy. In the meantime, as the largest forecourt operator in the world, they are moving to install electric charge points. There is a lot more to the announcement, including repurposing refineries for different fuel types, lobbying and working with their biggest clients to develop solutions, airlines, shipping and heavy land transport being markets that need to address carbon neutral issues. We shall see.
siwhi
Active member
IOCs have serious issues to face if they are to successfully pivot their businesses from oil to renewables. They have some directly transferable skills such as offshore engineering for wind turbines, with the related service and support requirements. But their main plan to pivot their business away from oil and to be as profitable (with 8-10% returns) in the renewables world come from, in the case of BP for example: "projects and operations experience, its power trading capabilities, its ability to eke out better operational efficiency, and its financing capabilities." In other words, corporate advantages of scale related to risk management, access to capital and trading markets and project management experience. These are worth something against smaller competitors, but the strategy will only succeed if investors support it and if they can dispose of their legacy cost base and stranded assets pronto (eg sell them to the Saudis). I say that having been a market analyst at Kodak.
It will be interesting to see if they do succeed, but the European based oil firms clearly feel they have to try or die. In itself this attempt to pivot is, for me at least, grounds for optimism that a great and positive change is underway in our economies, societies and hopefully environment.
How BP Plans to Make Oil-Like Returns From Renewables
