Natural Gas Generators

[Timokreon]

I'd really like to put one of these whole house gens at my place. I have a couple good places, one uses Kohler and one is Generac. The Kohler place would be able to do everything, gas, electrical, etc... which to me is an advantage. That and I really like their outfit.

A lot of money though, and I have several things I need to replace. :sigh:

 

[abita_brewing]

...manage temperatures by running rich of peak using fuel to cool or lean of peak using air to cool....something any carbureted engine will not be able to take advantage of. Aircraft have the added advantage of adiabatic lapse rate cooling as altitudes increase.

Went way to far with this.....

Worth noting that a nat gas generator is using a fuel that's already in gaseous phase. A gasoline unit does throw off heat vaporizing liquid gasoline into vapor.

scurries off to lookup some data

Heat of vaporization for 10% ethanol blend is about .43KJ/gram

Heat of combustion for 10% ethanol blend is about 46KJ/gram.

So... a 1/100 ratio.

So... we are cooling the carb, intake air, and some other items to a small degree.
On one hand... we are cooling the engine a little.
On another hand, we are cooling the incoming air charge... increasing density... leading to MORE air/fuel coming in... increasing heat (after combustion) even more.

It's been a while since I did any differential equations and combustion math... so I'm going to stop here and leave it up to y'all to speculate about.

I do know that my 35 briggs/diahatsu carb on my mower gets cold enough, even on 95F days, to condense water and drip a small, but steady, series of drips onto the engine.

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

Pretty glad I have my Generator right about now since I'm in Houston