The performance of steam engine system with retrofitted reciprocating engines
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Date
2018-05
Authors
Zabeer Abhar Zainal Abiden
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Abstract
Steam engines were one of the early human inventions in power generation
technology. They were essential during the Industrial revolution as steam engines are
used in ships, locomotives and also factories in driving machineries. At present, there are
no available steam engines in the market and it is usually self-developed by using any
engines that are available. This project is done to determine the performance of two
engines that are available in a steam engine system. The steam engine system is
composed of 3 main parts which are the boiler, pressure regulating valve and the steam
engine. The boiler which is fueled by LPG is a vertical fire-tube boiler with a 7.5 liter
capacity and can operate up to 10 bar of pressure. The pressure regulating valve is a
Yoshitake GD-45P which has maximum operating temperature of 220℃ and maximum
operating pressure of 2MPa. The steam engines are a 2-stroke engine and a 4-stroke
converted 2-stroke engine. The performance of the steam engine system was determined
at three different speeds of flywheel by the variation of load and inlet pressure where the
speed of the flywheel is maintained. The boiler has the efficiency of 44.68% and can
supply power input to the engine up to 5kW. Due to low efficiency and power generated
by the boiler, the 4-stroke engine is not suitable to operate in this system. However, for
the 2-stroke engine, the highest brake power, indicated power and friction power is 4.01
W, 5.408 kW and 5.405 kW respectively. The highest specific steam consumption is
4075.09 kg/kWh. Besides, the highest mechanical efficiency is 0.127% while the highest
specific steam consumption is 4075.09 kg/kWh. A quite low overall efficiency is
obtained for the 2-stroke engine in this system which is 0.0523%.