Diesel engine may have sucked out submarine oxygen

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | May 5, 2003 | Indira Lakshmanan in Beijing

[txzman]

...it is copied from the decades-old Soviet Romeo class, which was based on a German U-boat produced in 1944.

Nothing like modern technology!

[stainlessbanner]

they are difficult to detect, and unseen submarines are a powerful deterrent to any enemy.

I think a diesel engine would be much louder than a nuclear powered ship.

[Fudd]

I doubt this is the REAL way these sailors died, however.

I work with a graduate student from mainland China. We were talking about rockets and I mentioned the 1995 (or 96) Long March rocket failure, where a rocket veered off course just after launch and killed a number of people when it slammed into a local village. He did not believe me at first, but after I showed him a few web pages, his question became, "how come I never heard about that?" (he was in China at that time).

He's a smart guy, but he just doesn't get it.

[NCC-1701]

Don't forget about the planned manned spaceflight late this year. Thier spacecraft is based upon the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in use since 1967 when Soyuz 1 flew. That crashed and killed Vladimir Komorav. Hope the Chinese have a good flight.

[ko_kyi]

From what I have read, they are only louder when moving. When idle the reactor makes a little more noise than just using battery power. I don't think you can shut a reactor completely off, but I bet some Freepers can elaborate.

[poindexter]

Maybe they were running submerged with a (faulty) snorkel and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Insidious.

[Noumenon]

Hey, Brian -

Apply your analysis to the Three Gorges dam project, and you've got a recipe for a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. When - and not if - that dam fails, it'll plunge China into an economic free fall.

[bmwcyle]

When you run on the battery underwater, they are more quiet then a nuke depending on who made it. When you run on the diesel underwater, it is noisy and you die.

[LibertarianInExile]

You won't die if your sub has a snorkel. Even some modern ones do, ya know. :)

[boris]

"Diesel engine may have sucked out submarine oxygen

Where was Monica?

--Boris

[bmwcyle]

No, but you suck the air out quick if the snorkel valve is closed. The Sweeds are using hydrogen peroxide with a sterling engine. The hydrogen peroxide produces oxygen to be vented into the ship. The Russians use a some trick on their produced Kilo to extend the underwater time. But the snorkeo has to be open to use.

[boris]

We all lived
In a diesel submarine
Diesel submarine,
Diesel submarine.

We all lived in a diesel submarine...

[Blueflag]

But a diesel running on a snorkel is advertising to every passive detection system "here I am" ... and then you die.

Diesel Electric boats, GOOD ones, are hard to detect acoustically, especially if they are smart about thermoclines and hover/drift.

But the MADs and the blue lasers can find them/their wakes; and if you're close enough, the right 'SONAR' techician can discern their quiet spot in the water from the ambient noise around them.

If they fire a weapon, they die soon thereafter. Three nations are really good at ASW. We are one of them.

[OrioleFan]

They probably ought to test the sub for SARS.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

It sounded a little fishy to me too. I don' have your knowledge but I would have expected them to have some sort of an alarm sound if their oxygen was going. After reading your post, I wonder what they're hiding.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Good observations.....

The pain is rapid and excrutiating when the snorkel slams shut while submerged for more than 10-15 seconds.

CO/CO2 poisoning maybe from a bad ventilation lineup?

That could kill the crew without the pain and agony of of a diesel engine (which acts as a positive displacement pump until it shuts off naturally form lack of air!) pumping the air out of the sub.

Chlorine or battery gasses would also kill the crew, but with nasty indications of burns and over a longer period of time.

...---...---

Ten days of no activity from a surfaced sub on a training mission in a small enclosed waterway and the Chinese didn't notice? Not reasonable, even if they are claiming "radio silence."

[Robert A Cook PE]

US sub design for diesels is to have the diesel suck air directly form the ventilation systems (fwd compartment/missile compt/engineroom or wherever) and burn it and exhaust the gasses overboard.

As you know, the US and German snorkels extend above the surface, and allow replacement air to get into the whole boat, which obviously replaces the internal air being sucked into the diesel and sent overboard. That way, if a fire happens, (or the atmosphere is contaminated with some chemical or foreign agent like a freon leak, torpedo fuel leak, or whatever agent) you suck the bad air out through the diesel from the affected compartment, and bring in replacement clean air from outside the hull.

So how could a Chinese sub, based on Russian copies of a German design get cross-contaminated? First guys on-board would be the only ones to know, because they are ones who found (and fixed) the valve lineups.

[Gamecock]

They're planning to fly men to the Moon

How well do diesel powered rockets work in space?

[j_tull]

Beat me to it. Surely someone would have noticed the 4" vaccuum being pulled because diesel is running with the head valve shut. I agree, this ain't what happened.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Not too well. HA!