Gas Turbines?

[mcarling]

Originally Posted by pdf27

Oddly, one of the problems with this would be the people who got their fingers burnt with the diesel-electric Lagoons - which will make the number of people willing to try weird and wacky prime movers thin on the ground right now.

It seems to me that the biggest deficiency with the electric propulsion Lagoons was the use of lead acid batteries. Switching from a reciprocating diesel generator to gas turbine generator would not, in my opinion, overcome the limitations of the batteries. LiFePO4 batteries are, in my opinion, the big step toward viable electric propulsion, but gas turbines will be another nice step too.

[pdf27]

Oh, agreed - it's pretty easy to sketch up an Electric Lagoon design that's lighter than the standard one. A lot of this is about perception rather than reality though, which is why I think it would be a hard sell - take a look through this thread at all the people who insisted turbines guzzled fuel even when presented with test data showing otherwise. That's with people with no financial skin in the game - so imagine how hard they'll be to persuade when you're asking them to shell out half a million dollars and they have the example of something that didn't work in front of them!

[mcarling]

Originally Posted by pdf27

A lot of this is about perception rather than reality though, which is why I think it would be a hard sell - take a look through this thread at all the people who insisted turbines guzzled fuel even when presented with test data showing otherwise.

Fuel consumption is an area where large turbines have an advantage over small turbines. I was more amused by the posts insisting that gas turbines couldn't run on ordinary marine diesel. I agree that perceptions will slow down adoption but, ultimately, seeing is believing. When one's friend has a gas turbine that has worked flawlessly for 12,000 hours with zero maintenance and is relatively quiet and vibration-free, the naysayers will have fewer listeners.

[model 10]

Originally Posted by mcarling

Fuel consumption is an area where large turbines have an advantage over small turbines. I was more amused by the posts insisting that gas turbines couldn't run on ordinary marine diesel. I agree that perceptions will slow down adoption but, ultimately, seeing is believing. When one's friend has a gas turbine that has worked flawlessly for 12,000 hours with zero maintenance and is relatively quiet and vibration-free, the naysayers will have fewer listeners.

Well as a naysayer, I was impressed by the video of the generator in the rich guy's boat. When my income bracket rises to that level instead of not even being able to afford a new converted diesel tractor engine, I will really be impressed.
As someone who has spent 40 years and a good portion of my hearing around these things, I was was surprised.

[mcarling]

Originally Posted by Guy

Well as a naysayer, I was impressed by the video of the generator in the rich guy's boat. When my income bracket rises to that level instead of not even being able to afford a new converted diesel tractor engine, I will really be impressed.

As others have astutely pointed out above, the economic viability of gas turbines in ordinary sized sailing yachts (10-15 meters) will come only if and when the electric car industry adopts gas turbines as range extenders. The Capstone gas turbines are used as range extenders in buses, not cars, which why MME are trying to sell them for yachts over 35 meters. However, I believe the S/Y Lethantia uses traditional reciprocating diesels for propulsion when motoring and the gas turbine only for hotel loads. I believe a 30kW Capstone gas turbine would be fine for an electric propulsion sailing yacht in the 15-20 meter range (the electric Lagoon 440 came with a 22kW generator), just expensive to buy.