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Who knew?!
Main grass pressure is sustained using engines recovered from retired lightning fighters
Britain’s sprawling gas network is still reliant on a fleet of ageing aircraft engines, some stripped from 1960s RAF Lightning fighter jets, it has emerged.
Its Rolls Royce Avon engines were so powerful that the aircraft could reach twice the speed of sound, with pilots often comparing it to flying a rocket.
When the decommissioning of the Lightning fleet coincided with the UK’s conversion to North Sea gas, the engineers building the network snapped up the engines to pump gas through the new energy system.
However, cost remains an issue, with the network powered by 68 turbines spread across 21 pumping stations where upgrading just one costs around £40m.
Last autumn, the Government’s National Infrastructure Assessment suggested the entire network should be decommissioned.
The old BBC Television Centre powered its studios with a generator powered by a Rolls Royce jet engine and the surplus heat was fed to local homes
One of my clients, a manufacturing business with a plant in the UK, still makes 'aero derived' gas turbines.
Its a good example of precision engineering that we can do so well.
Producing around 60MW at >60% eff.
Generally used in the oil/gas industry on platforms that need to drive an electrical generator or a 'big' compressor.
Still plenty of RR Avon turbines operating world wide for similar duties.
Some of the biggest coal power stations had RR Olympus engines as backups, it’s a big part of how the lights stayed on during the miners strike.
Some of the biggest coal power stations had RR Olympus engines as backups, it’s a big part of how the lights stayed on during the miners strike.
Was going to say the same, Olympus being what was in Concorde.
There's a bit of a problem with them actually because they've pretty much all gone with the stations they supported. The purpose of them was as blackstart generators, to supply just enough power to run control systems and critical plant to start a main unit after a grid size power failure. Recovery from such an event will be something of a challenge now.
The old BBC Television Centre powered its studios with a generator powered by a Rolls Royce jet engine and the surplus heat was fed to local homes
and the back up genny in the basement was an old submarine engine
I was doing some work in a gas power station not so long ago. The high pressure gas pipeline has to switch to a low pressure line (about 800mm diameter I reckon, can't touch the floor if you sit astride it) as it goes under a residential area. When it gets to the power station there is a huge room with two compressors in it to get the gas back to high pressure for the main turbines.
We had to work whilst the power station was on standby but were repeatedly warned that if the grid wanted power at short notice, the noise in the compressor room would be incredibly loud and damaging even with ear plugs and ear defenders. I've heard it running, and even next door the noise was incredible.
I don't think the compressors were turbines though, they looked like ship engines about 2 or 3 stories high! The amount of energy needed to get the gas back to high pressure must be incredible.