Old Engine or Something
Old Engine or Something
Not sure if this is Gas, Steam, or a Compressor? What does everyone think? It says Bessemer on the side. Second picture is an oilfield Natural Gas engine.. looks about the same.
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quando omni flunkus moritati 
Re: Old Engine or Something
yea, that's an old oil field engine. They have quite a few of those old ones around here like that, some even are still in use today. They're also called hot pipe engines, which were pretty much a diesel engine, but would also run on natural gas. The front has a flame which gets the pipe really hot and it acts like a glow plug in a diesel engine, but the compression/pressures involved are much much lower.
You commonly used to see those running the old pump jacks out in the field since they would run off of the natural gas that was getting pumpped up with the crude oil, which normally would just get vented to atmosphere or stored in tanks. My brother works on the various pump jacks in this area and he's taken me out on the route a few times and we had to hand crank and start a few of those engines to get the pump jacks going, which some of the engines take two people to start. (one person to hold in the intake valve, and the other to crank the engine over, then once it's spinning, you release the intake valve and it kicks over on it's own)
You commonly used to see those running the old pump jacks out in the field since they would run off of the natural gas that was getting pumpped up with the crude oil, which normally would just get vented to atmosphere or stored in tanks. My brother works on the various pump jacks in this area and he's taken me out on the route a few times and we had to hand crank and start a few of those engines to get the pump jacks going, which some of the engines take two people to start. (one person to hold in the intake valve, and the other to crank the engine over, then once it's spinning, you release the intake valve and it kicks over on it's own)