Shipbucket

I haven't posted an image since the "Country's first dreadnought" thread a while back so I thought I'd come up with something different just like the ice breaking dreadnought was.

Standard 1800 ton gross at 11ft; empty 18in draft box bow aggregate.


Standard 1700 ton gross at 11ft; empty 18in draft raked bow aggregate barge.


Idea for a coal fired towboat, 9ft draft and about 4.5MW to 6 MW of steam turbine electric power plus maneuverability of jet drives by Hamilton Jet. At 16% thermal efficiency it should have a range of 1500 miles burning 26,000,000 btu /ton anthracite and 1800 burning 17,600,000 btu/ton powder river basin coal at 28% efficiency because of the gas producer fire box is more efficient with higher volatile percentage fuel. Will fit within a normal barge footprint so the max 1200ftx110ft lock size tow could be 17 instead of the normal max of 16, although 15 is the most common.

Here's a typical Ohio or upper Mississippi River tow, also internal cutaways and different view angles.


Spent near a week on the towboat alone and over a month researching steam plants and boilers.

All comments welcome, even politics!

Well that's an original topic for sure
The drawing looks the part though, at least the tug boat is detailed enough to see that.
I might get tiring going on about that, but I think the top views of the empty barges would benefit from some shading to show the empty hold, instead of a blank grey slab that might as well be a top cover.
Just so I know, have you shown the barges at full and light displacement side-by-side? Or is there some other weird assembly mechanism where they would snap together with different drafts for some reason?

uhm why exactly do you have coal steam turbine powered electric waterjets on a pusher tug? and what year exactly is this meant to be?

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

Yeah, I need to work on the hold depth, now that you said it they do look like covers but their just empty bottoms.
The barges are shown at full and unloaded yes, same for the head on views of the 5x3 tow, however only the loaded is shown on the side view of the 5x3 tow.
I've been reading a book of David Wardale's accomplishments and got into looking at L.D. Porta's work, and before long I was on navweps reading about different thermal efficiency of ship powerplants. Part of the reasoning behind a modern coal fired towboat comes from cost of fuel and maintenance concerns, however most of this is rail based knowledge. Being that towboats in the US are powered by modern diesel engines it seemed somewhat feasible to us this research material in a towboat. I originally was thinking of going with a firetube boiler but I couldn't manage to get it packaged and still have half the range listed or it came out extremely top heavy along with difficulties involved with extraction of turbines and electrical gear from the top by cranes. The other main advantage of the watertube boiler is that it is easier to manage high pressures than in a firetube, only a German firetube reached my goal of 1500psi, it reached 1750. Also unlike a locomotive there is unlimited condensing energy available so thermal efficiency is increased by reusing the same boiler water over and over, Porta's water treatment means less scale formation which also helps by needing fewer blowdowns. Because of he condensing a turbine made perfect sense because its can exhaust into a vacuum now and boats run at near full throttle all the time headed up river and only down river are prolong periods of lower power found but even then a flanking a turn needs lots of power in reverse, from what I've found. The choice of pumpjet came down to no requiring long drive lines of a prop and no longer having 6 rudders for a twin wheeled boat, 2 astern and 4 flanking rudders ahead of the wheels. But Hamilton HM811 drive versus a Schottel SPJ520 was down to the Hamilton being able to produce full power in any direction instantaneously even stationary because of the variable position reverse buckets. Also the Epa emissions are cracking down even more and NOx and CO are the biggest hurdles to be met by a diesel where as a furnace runs at low pressure with easily adjusted lambda and AFR settings, that and calculating fuel prices diesel is barely more expensive than anthracite running and way more expensive than Powder River Basin sub-bituminous coal even though a 2-stroke EMD runs near 36% thermal efficiency. Would boiler certs and inspection be more expensive that for a diesel, most likely. But at the time when towboats were switching from steam to diesel the average diesel was 20% at lower price per btu than anthracite and sub-bituminous was not much less than diesel but the steam efficiency was in the single digits.

Leaving the technical discussion about propulsion aside, these are really nice drawings.

I don't understand why you would opt to use steam power rather than a diesel power plant. A turbine at high speed consumes 1.2 pounds of coal per 1 shaft horsepower generated, and a modern turbo diesel consumes 0.35 pounds of liquid diesel fuel per 1 shaft horsepower. Therefore, not only is it more efficient but if you used diesel you would end up carrying less fuel. Also, Diesel fuel is much less heavy than coal. So while I like the idea you're going for, I don't see it working from an efficient point of view.

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Best regards,

RegiaMarina1939

Can confirm. Lives on Ohio river

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Alternate Universe Projects:
Nation of Nukkumaa (A Septentrion Nation)
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=8129

Confirming my statement? Or something else?

_________________
Best regards,

RegiaMarina1939

confirming OP on how the barges look

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Alternate Universe Projects:
Nation of Nukkumaa (A Septentrion Nation)
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=8129

I see. They do look very nice, but as far as the technical aspects go I'm a little skeptical...

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Best regards,

RegiaMarina1939