A Simple Recuperated Ceramic Microturbine: Design Concept, Cycle Analysis, and Recuperator Component Prototype Tests

Ceramic recuperators could enable microturbines to achieve higher fuel efficiency and specific power. Challenges include finding a suitable ceramic fabrication process, minimizing stray heat transfer and gas leakage, mitigating thermal stress, and joining the ceramic parts to neighboring metal components. This paper describes engine and recuperator design concepts intended to address these obstacles. The engine is sized to produce twelve kilowatts of shaft power, and it has a reverse-flow compressor and turbine. Motivations for this layout are to balance axial thrust forces on the rotor assembly; to minimize gas leakage along the rotating shaft; to reduce heat transfer to the compressor diffuser; to enable the use of a simple, single-can combustor; and to provide room for lightweight ceramic insulation surrounding all hot section components. The recuperator is an annular, radial counterflow heat exchanger with the can combustor at the center. It is assembled from segmented wafers made by ceramic injection molding (CIM). These are housed in a pressure vessel to load the walls mainly in compression, and are joined together by flexible adhesives in the cool areas to accommodate thermal expansion. A representative wafer stack was built by laser-cutting, laminating, and sintering tapecast ceramic material. The prototype was tested at temperatures up to 675°C, and the results were used to validate analytical and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models, which were then used to estimate the effectiveness of the actual design. Turbomachinery efficiencies were also calculated using CFD, and allowances were made for additional losses like bearing friction and gas leakage. Based on these component performance estimates, a cycle model indicates the engine could achieve a net fuel-to-electrical efficiency of 21%, at a core weight including the recuperator of 11 kg, or about 1 kg/kW electric output.