Wood Gas micro turbine engine

Senior Design project I conceived. Garrett turbo, XS power wastegate, and a big tank...nothing special. We built it from junkyard stuff and a very small budget. Waste wood is the fuel. The thrust from the turbo is driving the larger turbine wheel. The turbine assembly was a car wheel with blades welded on which was attached to half of a rear truck axle. The target power output was ~8HP. A solar gas-turbine engine is in the works... check out my other videos

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• turbine
• jet
• engine
• wood
• gas
• gasification
• alternative
• energy
• biomass

[kevin8714]

i'm not saying this isnt a great project... you should look into water injection before the inlet to the turbine to increase mass flowrate and keep the temperatures down... what kind of pressure was the combustion chamber subjected to, and at what speed was the turbine running?

[turbomoore]

15-22lbs. The tach on the secondary turbine didn't work, so I dunno. The EGTs were ok when the turbine was loaded, unloaded it got hot...which stands to reason. It's my understanding that you use H2O inj. when you are outside your highest effeciency island (to the right ) for the compressor to reduce the extra inlet heat you are adding. When loaded against the second turbine we determined it to be in the middle of the T3's eff. island. cheers

[thinwater2001]

Wouldn't you have less of a power loss if you just took power directly off of the cool side of the turbine instead of the thrust air coming out? Seems like you could harness alot more torque that way to me. Kudos on the project, thats some creative thinking!

[turbomoore]

You mean a seperate turbine like the one on the hot-side but instead on the inlet side...NO. The inlet air has no energy in comparison to the exhaust. Pulling power off the turbo's shaft via gear reduction would be the best, this is how large power turbines are usually arranged. Stay tuned...

[honeybunchickens]

what the f is that

[landingmodule]

You can extract power

1) turbine shaft

2) 2nd turbine in series (downstream)

3) 2nd turbine in parallel is most efficient when you have the engineering freedom, because you can keep the compressor pressure ratio down (around 1.4 - 2.0). This way the adiabatic losses (temp rise through the compressor) are kept to minimum, and any regenerative counterflow heat exchanger requires low PR to be efficient.

2) makes sense when working with offtheshelf turbo. The sweet spot is usually around PR 1.6-2.5

[mudwerk]

Cool, I wonder where you got the idea to build this thing?

[sabbadess]

I worked on a large combined turbine plant. You don't want to try to attach to the turbo's shaft. Think of your system as just a "wind generator". Now install a second turbine downstream attached to the generator. It allows the shafts to run at different speeds for better efficiency. It also helps with some of the heat issues.

[timpovsqb]

The big red glowing thing is the combustion chamber...The yellow glowing is the turbine...it burns wood i.s.o. a liquid fuel.

[deauzie]

what is the combustion chamber and how does it work

[thinwater2001]

Off the turbo's shaft is what I was talking about, I guess I could've been more clear. Cool project and cool combination of turbo plus wood gasification.  The turbo power's up and causes the gasification to increase which repeats the cycle!