I've had a chance to look more closely at today's announcement. These are just my own thoughts. Always happy to be corrected.
Firstly, both of these purchased units are modular and are almost certainly built to the dimensions of two shipping containers, a 40 foot and a 20 foot, complete with the corner and side locks necessary to be transported by sea from Spain to Australia and then on to Leigh Creek by road. Probably a few of the holes for roof fans etc will not be cut during manufacture or will be securely blanked to keep the box weathertight on the voyage..
Reading from the right, the syngas comes in, and still being pretty hot, goes through a fan assisted air heat exchanger and then into the engine, which looks like a turbocharged V16 diesel. Turbocharged for efficiency. More on this in a moment.
Obviously the engine drives the generator, to the left of it, probably through a constant speed drive. A CSD is the most common way for generators to produce stable voltage, though there are other methods. Above the generator would be all the equipment required to stabilise and regulate the power supply. Other minor equipment visible are two extraction fans and a vertical exhaust for waste gases from the engine.
Siemans are 'best of breed' for electrical equipment. For example, it's all their gear in Spain's electric High Speed Trains, the largest HST network in Europe. But they are not builders of reciprocating engines, AFAIK. So the engine will almost certainly be sourced from elsewhere. To me, there seem to be two logical contenders:
MTU 4000 Series - MTU is a division of Rolls Royce and their V16 4000 engine is very common in locomotives, marine, mining vehicle and road applications.
Perkins 4000 Series - Perkins is a division of Caterpillar and their engines are widespread in rail vehicles, in Caterpillar mining and construction vehicles and in marine applications.
Although both these engine types usually run on diesel, they each have thousands of hours [maybe millions?] tweaked to run on natural gas and other fuels such as methane from garbage dumps. Spares are readily available locally for both, so either would be a logical choice.
Missing from the drawing is an aircon unit. Obviously in summer parked on a hot, dark coloured basin like the Leigh Creek coal field temperatures are really going to soar. Even hotter inside the box.
If either of these engines has been chosen, then I've calculated that the power output of each unit will be about 2.4 MW. So the two units running at rated output will produce just under 5 MW.
Today's announcement also makes clear that these units are not going to be connected to the SA power grid and will just power a local 'microgrid' for LCK's own on site use. This means zero revenue from power sales. But supplying power to the grid requires power dispatch and reliabilty criteria to be met, so probably this decision is for the best.
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