Cooperative Research and Development for Advanced Microturbines Program on Advanced Integrated Microturbine System, (Final Report)

摘要

The Advanced Integrated Microturbine Systems (AIMS) project was kicked off in October of 2000 to develop the next generation microturbine system. The overall objective of the project was to develop a design for a 40% electrical efficiency microturbine system and demonstrate many of the enabling technologies. The project was initiated as a collaborative effort between several units of GE, Elliott Energy Systems, Turbo Genset, Oak Ridge National Lab and Kyocera. Since the inception of the project the partners have changed but the overall direction of the project has stayed consistent. The project began as a systems study to identify design options to achieve the ultimate goal of 40% electrical efficiency. Once the optimized analytical design was identified for the 40% system, it was determined that a 35% efficient machine would be capable of demonstrating many of the advanced technologies within the given budget and timeframe. The items that would not be experimentally demonstrated were fully produced ceramic parts. However, to understand the requirements of these ceramics, an effort was included in the project to experimentally evaluate candidate materials in representative conditions. The results from this effort would clearly identify the challenges and improvement required of these materials for the full design. Following the analytical effort, the project was dedicated to component development and testing. Each component and subsystem was designed with the overall system requirements in mind and each tested to the fullest extent possible prior to being integrated together. This method of component development and evaluation helps to minimize the technical risk of the project. Once all of the components were completed, they were assembled into the full system and experimentally evaluated.