Inside the RRS James Clark Ross Jennifer Clarke, January 22, 2013
The Chief Engineer was kind enough to take us on a tour around the engine rooms( somewhere us scientists don’ t normally get to see!) and explain why and how the JCR is different from other ships. I thought I would share with you some of the things I learnt!
The ship has been specifically designed for science work- that doesn’ t just mean that there are labs on board( although there are), but runs all through the design of the ship down to the hull-shape around the propellers to make the ship less noisy with fewer vibrations, extra pumps to run all the fridges and cold rooms for our samples, and having small thrusters at the front and back of the boat to help us stay in the same place while we are sampling( otherwise the ocean currents would move us off position while we are measuring!).
Duncan, Chief Engineer, starting off the tour in the control room. @ Jerremy Young
The ship’ s diesel engines generate a high-voltage AC current which is then is converted to DC to power the main drive motors. As a result of this conversion the primary AC supply is uneven with glitches and imperfections. So, it cannot be directly converted to a low-voltage AC supply to run all the scientific instruments. Instead it is used to drive motors( which don’ t mind the glitches) and these in turn drive generators that give a very pure signal to keep our instruments happily running. I work in the carbonate group and we have a lot of instruments that depend on this clean electricity to run.
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