Reply To: Nuplex.

[Aeronaut]

You’ve never been to Springfield, Illonois, Rematog. We just spent 4 days down there with friends who lost power for a few hours and say that it happens often. Sigh. Fact of life here. Sigh.

My twin screw guided missile destroyer had a pair of 1200 pound plants using 1 or 2 boilers each to spin triple stage turbines, before the reduction gearing that actually turned the propellers. We could also cross-connect to run off of only 1 boiler when we wanted to pretend we weren’t a fuel guzzler. Granted doubling the pressure more than doubles the latent heat required to make steam, but you’re talking about 17M BTU/hr, and I’d be very surprised if that wasn’t enough.

Let’s pretend this is purely an engineering problem instead of sales/politics tainting the design point. FF is small enough to put right next to your boiler, where the fuel storage and delivery machinery used to be. How many BTUs/hr do those boilers currently need from gas, oil, or coal? Surely not 17M BTU/hr?