Today, 80% of the world’s electricity is generated by steam turbines and it is not hard to realize that steam turbines are going to be critical components in the intense productification phase that will commence, once the E-Cat is released. In this short article we are going to talk about some interesting facts about (industrial sized) steam turbines.
The first modern steam turbine was invented in 1884 by Sir Charles Parsons and in the 20th century steam turbines became the most powerful electric power generators available. The efficiency of the turbines quickly stagnated but in the 90′s there were several important design breakthroughs that significantly improved the efficiency:
- Development of new heat resistant high chromium percentage ferritic steels – withstanding higher steam temperatures.
- New advanced approaches to steam path design.
- Development of longer last stage rotating blades that decreases exit losses in the turbine.
The market leaders in terms of (big scale) turbine technology are:
- Alstom (France)
- Siemens (Germany)
- GE Power Systems (US)
- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Japan)
- Hitachi and Toshiba Corp (Hapan)
- Leningrad Metallic Works (Russia)
- Ansaldo Energia (Italy)
- Turboatom (Ukraine)
- Skoda (Czech Republic)
Industrial steam turbines typically operates in an environment of 600 degrees Celsius with a pressure of 30,000 kPa. Typically the power output range of a single turbine of this size is around 100 MW to 1 GW with a gross efficiency value of around 50%. In comparison some water turbines have an energy efficiency of up to 90% and combustion engines have energy efficiencies in the range 10%-50%.
Food for thought:
It is going to be interesting to see how the E-Cat unit will drive also the development of smaller “domestic” turbines for thermo-electric conversion. How quickly will there be a legal framework in place for end user cold fusion – i.e. cold fusion driven home heaters / electrical generators? How fast will, say, AmpEnergo or Defkalion launch products that also generate electricity? When will we see industrial sized cold fusion reactors, capable of powering 1 GW turbines. AmpEnergo has explicitly stated that they will not go for the “low hanging fruit” – does this mean that they will not consider the end user markets at all – at any stage?
Mcap
July 14, 2011
Intersting post. Another technology that might be explored is the Tesla turbine which is much simpler and unexpensive than blade turbines. Given the low energy cost of ecat energy for a residential installation a cheaper turbine could have a big market.
Ecatreport
July 15, 2011
Problem must be efficiency. Do you know the efficiency of a Tesla turbine? Is there even Tesla turbines on the market today?
Carlo Colombo
July 16, 2011
I don’t know about any Tesla turbine on the market, but I’m afraid there’re none. I heard about experiments reaching 35% efficiency. the good thing is that theoretically the efficiency should be higher for smaller turbines. Tesla was predicting efficiencies grether then 95% but unproven of course. We cannot compare a today,s blade turbine but that’s come from years of development. The Tesla turbine is still practically undeveloped, so there should be greater margines of improuvement.
As I said, for an ecat where we are not looking for dramatic performances, but low cost and low maintenace, Tesla turbines could be the way to go. It’s just a guess.
Ecatreport
July 16, 2011
It can never have greater effiency than the carnot cycle but perhaps you meant 95% of the carnot efficiency. 35% would be a good match to the 1 MW plant so perhaps you should give it a go with some new Tesla turbines
.
h_corey
July 14, 2011
I believe Rankine Cycle Steam generation will soon be replaced by Super critical CO2 Brayton Cycles. They can run on heat in the 300-500C range (perfect for ECat), extremely compact, and more efficient than Rankine. You could put the entire 1MW system on the back of a semi trailer.
Ecatreport
July 15, 2011
Interesting, do you have any product examples in the MW range?
Ecatreport
July 15, 2011
Steam engines are usually below 10% efficiency and household normally uses 20% electricty and 80% heat so one would need a solution that is >20% efficiency. Now don’t forget that you will need a battery setup too if you want to go offgrid completely. Once you put on the microwave, the stove, the dishwasher and the washing machine simultaneously you need some UPS solution to shave off your peak consumption.
Ecatreport
July 15, 2011
Stirling Engines are very efficient solutions for converting heat to electricity. They have been quite expensive historically but that is probably mainly because there has not been any great demand for them, because competing alternatives has up to date been better and cheaper. But when it comes to the E-Cat the only alternatives are steam engines or steam turbines and stirling motors are probably both more efficient and a lot less noisy so for a household solution we might see a new stirling engine product flora coming soon.