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Causes of costly maintenance problems associated with a high-population shipboard air conditioning plant were identified in the laboratory. Solutions, including a new capacity control system were developed and demonstrated on two ships. The improvement package can be backfitted for a fraction of the cost to replace the malfunctioning units.

A new type of screw pump has inherent design features (e.g. balanced design, low bearing loads, wear-adjustable rotors, low rubbing loads, …) which may allow efficient, reliable, and maintainable operation in numerous applications, particularly for pumping low-viscosity fluids. Initial tests on an 87 gal/min prototype pumping lubricating oil at pressures up to 500 lb/in2 and speeds up to 1800 rev/min achieved good performance with little wear over 3400 hours of operations. Performance projections indicate volumetric efficiencies of 50 percent should be reached using the existing prototype pumping 1200 lb/in2 water in one stage.