Breakthrough in Gas Turbine Design

Filed in archive Edge Technology on August 22, 2006

University of Florida: The director of the University of Florida's Energy and Gas Dynamics Systems Laboratory, William Lear has revealed a gas turbine engine that features a heat exchanger to reduce fuel costs and use a re-circulating exhaust system to lower emission levels.

These modifications make gas turbines more efficient by 1) extracting waste heat from the exhaust which makes the engine run with less fuel, 2) re-circulating the heat which helped improved performance, and 3) decreasing the total size of the turbine such that it can fit at the back of a truck yet produce enough power for a naval ship. Compact and powerful, the applications of this gas turbine design include those identified by NASA and the US Army. Eventually though, these will be commercially available at a 30 to 100 kilowatt power range. Commercial deployment of these modified gas turbine design is schedule for another couple of years and we expect design advancements then.