Marine engine cooling Systems

Several years ago I became faced with a vexing overheating issue utilizing the 50-horsepower diesel I’d setup aboard a customer’s vessel simply couple of years earlier. Every time the throttle had been higher level to full, within minutes the engine chronically boiled over. While couple of skippers ever before run their particular engines at complete throttle, every engine should-be capable of this without overheating. I examined (and exhausted) the typical options: strainers, impellers, water-pump cams after which the raw-water side of the heat exchanger itself. Every little thing felt fine. Eventually, in an act of near-desperation, I eliminated heat exchanger, disassembled it and inspected it carefully from the workbench. The things I discovered remained with me from the time.

Hold that thought.

Most marine diesel motors depend on what’s generally a shut coolant system. As with a car motor, the heat of burning is soaked up by antifreeze (or, much more precisely, coolant). In an automobile, that temperature is then circulated airborne, via a radiator; with a sailboat, it's used in the sea via a heat exchanger.

Shut air conditioning methods, which usually function at between 180 and 195 degrees F, offer a number of important advantages over available cooling methods. The second allow seawater to flow through the iron engine, the foreseeable outcome of which will be deterioration. Furthermore, available air conditioning methods must run at a cooler and less efficient temperature, usually around 150 degrees F, to avoid salt from precipitating out of the seawater and depositing itself within the cooling system’s passages, in which it acts as an insulator and decreases the warmth transfer efficiency. This relatively cool operation promotes the forming of carbon within cylinders.