Power Systems of The Fram

The Engines of the Fram
Although the the Fram was a sailing ship, each iteration had an engine. The first two versions used a 220 hp steam engine for propulsion, but during Sverdrup`s expedition the flues leading from from the boiler where burnt out and the whole engine was completely replaced by a 180 hp diesel engine, built by the Norwegian diesel Co.

The first engine required a large boiler and significant amounts of coal, more powerful then the second engine. The replacement allowed for more efficient fuel use, this was important since the trip to the antarctic was significantly farther. Space that was used by the coal bunkers was replaced by oil storage so no extra space was gained by the upgrade. The final version of the Fram had the capacity to hold 90 tons of oil.

Heat from the engines was likely very useful to maintaining livable temperatures during the trip, but while stationary it was useless. During the arctic expedition the engine was disassembled to make space for a work room.

The propeller was capable of being removed and stored to protect it from the ice during it`s time while stationary. The propeller for Amundsen`s Fram was 5 feet 9 inches in diameter, rather small for a propeller but necessary due to the high number of rotations per minute of the new engine.


Lighting Aboard the Fram


Nansen had planned to save resources by taking advantage of the only replenish able sources of energy available in the arctic; the wind. While stationary in the ice a windmill was assembled mid deck. A series of gears lead down to a dynamo,
an old and very large type of electric generator. The generator had a small room dedicated to it mid ship and weighed about 5,000 pounds. The electricity was used to power arclamps through out the ship. This clever innovation would have saved tons of room that would have been needed to store lamp oil. Since the Fram was not used this way in the journey to the Antarctic so the windmill was not useful and was not put on the south pole expedition.

Power Systems of The South Pole Station

The South Pole Station

The current power station is partly buried, conected to the elevated station by a underground passage. Cables bringing power to the research laboratories are hidden below the snow.

The plant can produce up to one Megawatt of power using the four 3512b Caterpillar diesel engines, before this iteration of the power plant the station used three 3412 Caterpillar engines.

The station uses JP-8 jet fuel normally only reserved for military purposes due to its stability at different temperatures. The most desirable quality of it, for the south pole station, is that it will not become gelatinous at low temperatures.

9 fuel tanks in the station hold 950000 liters of fuel. The fuel is delivered like all things brought to the station by plane.

Supplies

Getting supplies in to an isolated community is a huge problem. Since the community is not connected to the rest of the world, it must be able to survive on its own.

Both the Fram and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station initially dealt with this problem by creating a sort of supply line. The Fram’s supply line began with the ship itself. Supplies were loaded up and taken all the way down to Antarctica. Upon reaching the Bay of Whales, the ship was frozen in to the ice, and they set up a base camp. From there, small crews headed along the path to the South Pole, but instead of going all the way, they created supply depots at key locations and returned to base camp. This allowed Amundsen to travel lightly, and replenish his stock of food as needed on the way to the South Pole and on the way back.

Diagram of the Fram’s Supply Line

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has taken the idea of the supply line and applied it on a much larger scale. Supplies originate in the USA, are shipped to New Zealand and then to the McMurdo station in Antarctica. As you can see, this station is relatively close to the spot where Amundsen himself landed.

From McMurdo, the supplies are flown in a gigantic ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules cargo aircraft, which has the capacity to carry some 40 000 pounds of gear. Food, fuel, and equipment are all transported to the station in this manner.

Diagram of ASSPS’ Supply Line

Picture of the LC-130 Hercules Cargo Plane

Both of these structures had one large problem with their supply lines: they were not continuous. This is obvious for the Fram, as there was no one following them, and they did not plan to stay in Antarctica forever. However, the ASSPS is meant to last forever. This means that people live there all year-round, and therefore need supplies all year-round. Since the cargo planes cannot land for approximately 8 months of the year, no supplies are delivered.

Storage was and still is the easiest answer to the problem of a non-continuous supply line. The diagrams and pictures below illustrate how and where supplies were stored in each of the structures.

Space Allotted for Storage Aboard the Fram

Storage Space Inside a Large Quonset Hut at the ASSPS

Although the crew aboard the Fram killed their dogs as well as native Antarctic animals, and the ASSPS has a room to grow fresh vegetables, neither were really that self-sufficient. In the future, the solution to the problem of supplies would be to simply use only what you could find onsite. This would not be immediately possible, as the initial set of people and supplies
would still have to be transported. However, once the base community was established, surviving with no external support would be the goal.

I’ll finish with a quote from Aristotle’s Politics, Book II.

“There is another line of thought from which it is evident that it is not good to attempt to make the city too much of a unity. A household is more self-sufficient than an individual, and a state more self-sufficient than a household. Indeed, a state comes into being only when an association of many different kinds of people turns out to be self-sufficient. The greater the self-sufficiency, the more desirable the institution; therefore, a lesser degree of unity is more desirable than a higher.”

Any community – isolated or not – must be diverse in order to be self-sufficient. Perhaps the ASSPS needs only to expand and add a slightly wider range of people in to the mix, along with some new facilities and technologies, in order to survive on its own.

Water Supply at the South Pole

As an essential ingredient for life, water is a primary concern for any Antarctic expedition. In the past, expeditions would store water on-board a ship for the voyage and, upon arrival, melt snow by a variety of means for drinking. Various energy and labour-intensive approaches of gathering and melting surface snow were in use at most polar research facilities until the the recent past. At the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, heavy machinery was used to gather snow and dump it into a mechanical ice melter until 1995.

In the mid 1960's, US Army Engineer Corps Raul Rodriguez developed a new approach to the ice melters that had been in common use. The Rodriguez Well has since become the dominant method of obtaining water in polar environments. A well shaft is sunk about 250 feet beneath the surface where heat is used to create a bulb-shaped pool of warmed water. Typically steam is generated in a sub-surface compartment and piped down to the well pocket. Water in the well cavity is always kept above zero degrees with the use of steam, and thus the well cavity and reservoir expand over time to provide drinking water.

A typical Rod Well lasts approximately 7 years, or until the base of the bulb reaches around 500 feet below ground level. When the well becomes too deep it becomes more energy intensive to extract the water than to develop a new well. It is estimated that a typical Rodriguez Well can provide up to 1 million gallons of fresh water before it becomes too deep to economically extract the water.

Those who drink from a Rod Well are partaking of water that was trapped in ice in the distant past--the deeper you go the older the strata. According to John Rand, an engineer at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the well is currently providing water that was frozen around 500CE.

Recent innovations in Rod Well technology are the introduction of in-line heat exchangers to remove the warmth in the extracted water and return it to the well for greater energy efficiency. It is estimated that Rod Wells are about 80% more efficient than their predecessor technology of surface snow melting which requires a constant snow-gathering effort.