diesel on natural gas?

Not a military diesel, but my 40KW Mankato generator.. When the power frequenctly goes out, it automatically starts. Starts to consume diesel at 1.2 gallons per hour that is.

I have heard of diesels running on propane or natural gas, can canyone explain this and suggest how I might do it? I have plenty of gas here, it works when the electricity goes out, and it would be cheaper if not more convenient.

Patric, Try this. Wesport converts the diesel into LNG direct injection. Long...50 hrs worth of work..process, and expensive. But I have run these on the dyno and they work as well as the diesel fired ISX. Same HP, torque and the driveability is nice too.

http://www.westport.com/

I don't think there will be a kit to convert your gen though.

my response would be, if you need 40kw of power when the grid goes down then ~$4 an hour for your power needs isnt expensive at all. If you dont need that kind of capacity, get a smaller genset thats more effecient on fuel.

At my Army Reserve unit we had two big gensets that had 60 Series Detriots configured to run on natural gas. I talked to the guy that was installing them and he said they had put spark plugs into them the make them fire better.
They were very big units.

Colemans has been trying to sell one or more large Cummins NG powered gensets for ages. Not sure if DOD surplus.

The 40KW is overkill but it was had very cheaply including a Zenith automatic transfer switch. I can only consume about 12KW continuous max, but the starting loads are higher for the a/c's.