Towards the Development of the Finger-top Gas Turbines

Abstract

The ultra micro turbine concept based on MEMS technology was proposed by MIT in 1997, and since then several projects have been initiated and sponsored by DARPA to facilitate development at various universities and research institutions in the US. The present authors, who belong to Gas Turbine Society of Japan, regard such ultra micro gas turbine engine systems as being crucial for mobile and environmentally friendly energy utilization technology in the future for general use anywhere in the world. This report describes our palm top-gas turbine (2-3kW, dry weight of 14.3kg including generator, 235,000rpm, outer diameter of 180mm, and length of 335mm) and our finger-top gas turbine test model (tens of W, 1,170,000rpm, outer diameter of 23mm, and length of 32mm). These developments represent the outcome of a NEDO-backed three-year international joint research project involving cooperation among Japanese universities, institutions and private firms, together with ONERA, CIAM and VKI, from FY2001 to FY2003.

Micropower generation with microgasturbines: A challenge

“…The mould is produced layer by layer by Shape Deposition Manufacturing. Tokyo University [17] and Tohoku University [18] use five-axis micromilling to produce metal impellers with a diameter of, respectively, 8 and 10 mm.…”

“…Such power converters can be based on a wide range of operating principles: fuel cells, thermo-electric devices [2,3], thermophotovoltaic devices [4], external combustion engines [5] such as Stirling engines [6,7], internal combustion engines [8][9][10], wave disk engines [11], gasturbines [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21], and steam turbines [22].…”

“…In the literature, two different turbine size ranges can be found: a microrange (MIT [12], Tohoku University [13], Onera [14], National University of Singapore [15]) and a mesoscopic range (Stanford [16], University of Tokyo [17], Tohoku University [18], ETH Zurich [19], Belgium [20]). The microrange uses silicon technology, enabling the production of very small components with high accuracy.…”

“…For mesoscopic devices there is more design freedom, as a wide range of production methods is available: micromilling [17,18], micro-EDM [21], and micromoulding [16]. These production techniques allow the production of three-dimensional blade geometries in a wide range of materials (steel, nickel alloys, ceramics).…”