How a Gas Turbine Works

Arne Loft - developer of the gas turbine explains how it works. Gas turbines can use many kinds of fuel to reliably generate electricity or run a compressor. Frame 5 Gas Turbine diagram explained. First get it up to speed, air goes into compressor, then to combustion chamber, burned fuel is compressed and turns the shaft. the shaft can be connected to a generator. A control panel regulates fuel levels, which controls heat and speed. The starting motor clutch disconnects after getting the shaft up to speed. Mr. Loft help develop the turbine with a team at GE Schenectady. Bruce O. Buckland lead the team.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Gas turbine
• GE
• 7F
• 5F
• blades
• intake
• combustion chamber
• fuel
• heat
• physics
• engineering
• engineers
• Schenectady
• Schenectady General Electric
• Control Engineering
• Speedtronic
• control systems
• systems engineering
• power generation
• generator
• Edison Tech Center
• compressor
• shaft
• kilowatts
• flame sensor

[oowatsonoo]

frank whittle invented the gas turbine engine :O

[EdisonExploratorium]

@oowatsonoo Brown Boveri Company developed the first gas turbine for power generation, GE improved it with it's first team of engineers, then in the 1950s the Speedtronic control system allowed for pushing the envelop and the best gas turbine design to date. Engineers are still improving it.

A single inventor is rare if you look at history and the concept is mostly used for school children and simplistic adult minds. (pop science)

[Henry1993bc]

@MrAKFrost because to get the hydrogen you have to hydrolyse water which requires electricity, that's the issue, how you get the hydrogen

[Pob530756]

What a rare treat to have something like this explained by one of the original team. Thank you to all who made this available! If we valued our elders properly we'd have a great deal more exposure to them in ALL aspects of Society (and help keep THEIR minds active). We ought to beg them to go into the schools to spark the flame of creative engineering design in young minds. Kids can learn more from stories from folks like Mr. Loft, than they could ever learn from mere academic lectures.

[MrAKFrost]

One question .. when are we going to get smart and use the most abundant fuel source in the universe .. when are we going to free the world from our addiction to costly oil from terrorist states and start using .. *drum roll please* .. Hydrogen! Can we build and use a turbine that uses hydrogen fuel? Jet fuel is costing nearly $7.00 per gallon for commercial use and we use millions of gallons of it per day. Anyone have a better solution? Hydrogen is abundant - fossil fuels are ridiculous.

[Adogg475]

@CampKohler: It's not a clutch like you think. It's more of a turning gear motor to keep the shaft from bowing during shutdown. For start up it's for warming the shaft so we don't get bowing from a long outage, on a single shaft unit anyway.

[MrReshmarani]

i like this siats it is very interesting video

[CampKohler]

If the starting means is a direct-drive (no gears or belts) brushless motor, why would you need to disconnect it with a clutch after the turbine is running? Could not you just cut the power to it? I imagine the drag would be minimal and you would save the complexity of a clutch, which requires maintenance, etc.