ELECTRIC STARTER PROBLEMS S16R-MPTA

Southampton, Great Britain
For Royal Caribbean Cruises I conducted an inspection on a emergency generator set on-board one of their passenger ships. Their emergency gensets are equipped with two separate starting systems “air starters” and “electrical starters” and last named system gave problems. On air the engine rotation is 244rpm while electrically the speed was only 150rpm. Because of this low speed you need to have an excellent operating injection system otherwise there will be no fuel combustion. And during my inspection I discovered that their fuel system turned out to be contaminated by water and small solid particles clogging the fuel filter system. Due to absence of adequate parts to perform fuel system overhaul I advised client to conduct such including though rough fuel system flush as soon as they reach next port.