Re: itty bitty gas turbine on a chip

eunometic_at_yahoo.com.au
Date: 01/14/05 

Date: 13 Jan 2005 19:42:21 -0800

Al Montestruc wrote:
> See the article:
>
>
> http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2004/10/19.html
>
>
>
> ----------quote-----------
> "In the foreseeable future, Epstein expects, his tiny turbines will
> serve as a battery replacement, first for soldiers and then for
> consumers. But he has an even more ambitious vision: that small
> clusters of the engines could serve as home generating plants,
freeing
> consumers from the power grid, with its occasional black- and
> brownouts. The technology could be especially useful in poor
countries
> and remote areas that lack extensive and reliable grids for
> distributing electricity."
>
> --------end quote----
> This looks very promising. It would mean very light (very high power
to
> weight ratio) cheap mass produced gas turbine engines that can be
made
> into arrays. A single one can power a powerful cell phone or laptop
> with it's power supply being akin to lighter fluid, and about 10 to
20
> times as much energy per pound as the lightest batteries on the
market.
>
>
> Also IMHO the engines will wind up cheaper than large scale gas
> turbines per watt as this will involve fully automated mass
production
> technology. Get 746 watts together and you have a horsepower. An ASME
> technical paper I read on the subject implies that 50 watts per unit
is
> reasonable. Then 15 chips per horsepower and you can power an
american
> small car (90hp)with 1300 such chips. One of the nice things about
this
> is that tiny chip gas turbines can be practically made of ceramic
> materials which is next to impossible on large scale due to thermal
> shock and the fact that large ceramic parts always have cracks, while
a
> small thin wafer that the chips are etched from will not.

I suspect that these small turbines will be somewhat less efficient
than large ones becuase of their inabillity to uses elaborate
techniques though possibly their abillity to opperate at high
temperatures through greater suitabillity for use of ceramics may cut
the gap.

There are other researches who have fabricated minature Wankel Rotary
engines, these are particular suitable for two dimensional production,
and these might be the big competitor.

I suspect when used in laptops etc they will need to run of very clean
speciality fuels, propane or similar gases or alcahole.

The Holly grail for such power plants is to generate home power while
utilising the waste heat for generating hot water and home warming:
thus nothing goes to waste.

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