Not an apples to apples comparison but this paper Development and Decline of the British Crosshead Type Marine Propulsion Diesel Engine (pdf) is interesting.
Competition with Sulzer was one reason development of low-speed diesels in British companies faltered. Other factors are mentioned as well. British ship builders were slower to switch to diesel than their foreign competitors.
The decline in UK shipbuilding is a full magnitude worse the ours
and tha5 is really saying something ugly
One important factor in the decline of British manufacturing of low-speed diesel was competition from German and Japanese firms. U.S. companies would have faced the same competition.
What I can’t understand is why American industry claimed not to be able to compete when the little tiny phenomenally high cost, high wage, massive social benefits nation of Switzerland was able to virtually rule the world of slow speed marine diesels until the 1980s. They built every part of the engine in Winterthur during the years when American and British manufacturers claimed they couldn’t compete with Japanese or German builders. That has to be total BS considering how Germany managed to overcome every reason Americans found to not compete and ended up buying Sulzer.
This is when everyone gets to haul out their favorite theory. Here’s mine:
Just read an article today about Kodak and Fujifilms Why Kodak Died and Fujifilm Thrived: A Tale of Two Film Companies
Lots of discussion about business tactics and so forth but here is a key point:
To make matters worse, “Kodak withdrew early on from developing and manufacturing its own digital cameras to rely on OEM manufacturers instead. Not having its own technology such as sensor and image processing put Kodak at a considerable disadvantage when the digital race began in earnest”
Post-war German and Japanese cultures valued technical know-how and engineering prowess. In the U.S. it’s advertising and entertainment. Industries that create illusions.
My two cents, fwiw.
well I do know that Japan has especially strong protectionist policies so that while Japanese labor will cost more than Chinese labor, the nation accepts the higher costs in keeping all that production…
it is the direct opposite of the USA
Steamer in post #86 has shown that it’s not labor costs.
but of course Sulzer ended up licensing their designs to nations with low cost labor
still had US shipowners or the government wanted to install slowspeed diesels in ships built in the USA we could have also maintained the industry but we abandoned them right after WWII so the industry died needlessly
it wasn’t that we never had the ability to build these engines in the USA…it is that we turned our back on them after the War and I still say it was mainly the government that was responsible. They only wanted steamships which were fast but sucked down fuel like no tomorrow until the day came when that fuel was not cheap however by then it was too late and the cost to rebuild a slowspeed diesel production capacity was too much for the few orders that would be placed.
The US government needs to do whatever it takes to bring back machine tool and basic domestic manufacturing. It’s a social, economic, and defense priority.
You said a mouthful right there, I think.
Actually they didn.t. Winterhur was, the centre for R & D whilst the manufacture of slow speed diesels was licensed out., e.g.
The business model continues with Winterhur Gas & Diesel
It will be the jump to hydrogen that will be the next catalyst - scrubbers are being seen as a dead -end fix.
Agree. Hydrogen is the future, not only for ships but even trucks:
And trains:
Britain as looking at following Germany into the modern age of hydrogen powered trains:
The first large ship powered by hydrogen may be sailing the oceans by 2023:
Will the last steam powered ship be off the US register by then??
PS> I’m not talking about some veteran ships being preserved for nostalgic reasons.
BASTA! ENOUGH!
Once again heer Bugge you are taking a thread into a direction totally unrelated to its original topic which was supposed to be why the USA no longer has a slow speed diesel manufacturing capability. If you want to discuss hydrogen or any other alternative ship propulsion fuel please start a new thread.
A modern steam plant on land will be in the 40-45% efficiency range…and that is burning “cheap” coal. Thermodynamics explains a lot, but to keep it simple, to get max efficiency, one must strive for max temperature difference (steam temp vs condenser temp) and max pressure difference (steam operating pressure vs condenser pressure). The same applies for diesels max combustion temp, and max compression ratio leads to max efficiency.
To obtain high efficiency with a steam plant requires extra equipment and higher pressures that are just not feasible on a ship. Anyone that’s work in a utility plant on land usually yawns at the “high pressure” claim of 1000psi boilers. More info on striving for the best steam plant efficiency: https://www.elp.com/articles/print/volume-81/issue-1/power-pointers/primer-on-supercritical-steam.html
Many times, the best answer is the simplest. Fuel was cheap, big business is intellectually lazy, and slow speed diesels were just a “stupid fad”. Americans are often Luddites. Look at American ships built today…many would argue they are greatly lacking in innovation compared to vessels built elsewhere around the world.
The big brains figured steam was the way to go, and that’s what they did. Also, at the time, the high HP wasn’t available on reciprocating engines. It was a different mindset back then.
I agree that steam did offer the HP but there had to be people in the industry who always knew that slow speed diesels offered real economy and over the lifetime of a ship would mean real savings to the owners? Also the US could see the engines coming out of Switzerland and Germany…nothing was a secret plus it hadn’t been so many decades earlier that the US was building its own slow speed engines so no one had their head buried in the sand. I still say there was a hidden agenda at play which made all owners of US built ships in the 60’s and 70’s to opt for steam or at least medium speed diesels.
No need to switch or innovate when everyone kne that the American owned fleet was all going to be flag of convenience built in the cheapest shot hole with no environmental regulations and manned y third world villagers.
When the decision to go with steam (and gas) turbines for US Navy and MM ships were made large ships with diesel engines were built in Europe and Japan mainly.
BTW; many tankers were built with steam turbines well into the 1970’s, until diesels managed to catch up on available HP from single engine plants.
You are viewing this from today looking back in time. Put yourself back then and look forward. Diesel engines required much more maintenance and parts. O&M budgets were much higher (as mentioned in this thread).
Fuel came from a different account, and it was cheap back then. The only savings when comparing the two at the time was fuel consumption…and maybe that was marginal (the boiler will burn anything…who needs purifiers?) It appears that they did not care about the fuel savings, and that is why they stayed steam. Or they were just ignorant and resistant to change.
A boiler really shines when you want to burn garbage (literally) or coal. Short of gasification, it’s kinda hard to burn that in an INTERNAL combustion engine.
I’m finding the history of British low-speed diesels that @Kennebec_Captain pointed to quite fascinating. Sun Shipbuilding in the US was a licensee of Doxford during at minimum 1925-1956, and in fact built the largest-bore Doxfords ever made. Doxfords used co-generation of steam to provide high efficiency, and Sun did a lot of business in the twenties re-engining steamships.
Then there was the double-acting Still engine with steam on one side of the piston and fire on the other – again an attempt to capture additional heat from the combustion cycle.