Have You Seen The World's Largest Diesel Engine?

Published: Monday, August 1, 2011, 15:07 [IST]

Have you ever wondered how big an engine can be? Most of our cars in India are powered by engines as small as one litre. We even consider cars with four or six litre engines as massively powerful. The Bugatti Veyron, the world's fastest car is powered by an eight litre engine. If we move away from cars we have trucks with engines as big as ten litres. Further up the vehicle chain we will see massive jet engines in aeroplanes. But the vehicles with the biggest engines are ships.

Ships are getting more and more massive as they transport thousands of tonnes of cargo across the oceans. Wärtsilä-Sulzer a Finnish engine manufacturer has developed this massive 44 feet high two stroke diesel engine that can be fitted in the world's largest ships. This Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C engine with a capacity of 25,480 litres and has 14 massive cylinders.

You can see the engine being brought out of plant on a large 68-wheel truck. No other vehicle can manage the massive size of the engine

Weighing more that 2,300 tonnes, the Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C can generate a mind boggling 109,000bhp at a rather slow 102rpm. The world's largest diesel engine consumes 2.8 litres of diesel every cycle.

The engine company has so far built just 25 such engines. The company is expecting to build more such engines as shipping companies are building more and more huge cargo liners.

Article Published On: Friday, July 29, 2011, 13:53 [IST]

Read more on: #auto news #engine #veyron

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