A Theoretical Investigation of Characteristics of Diesel Engine with Coil Cooler System

Abstract

Heat exchangers are very essential devices for the industrial applications such as power plant industries, refrigeration and air conditioning systems; and automobiles systems etc. One of the sources to produce electric power is diesel engine with generator called diesel generator. Diesel is a working fluid in this system. In general diesel generators are equipped with radiators or cooling tower systems for cooling the system. For low capacity diesel generators such as ranging from 10 to 500 kW, radiator systems are used for cooling and for high capacity diesel generators ranging from 500 kW to 2 MW, cooling tower systems are used for cooling the system. Integrating the cooling tower system in high capacity diesel generator to cool the system results in various problems such as water pump failure, fan-belt failure, air locking etc. Moreover, pressure drop, huge quantity of water requirement and scale formation on heat transfer tube etc. due to secondary circuit were also taken into account. In this paper, cooling tower system is replaced by coil cooler system for 1 MW diesel generator and the characteristics of diesel engine with coil cooler system were observed. The results showed better results than existing systems such as effective heat transfer rates, high efficiency, low pressure drop, minimizing the raw water requirement, power saving, maintenance and trouble free etc.