Event Details
Beat the Diesel
The speaker for this presentation is Robin Mackay.
Biography
Robin founded Capstone Turbine Corporation in the 1990s. He served as VP Marketing for 8 years and as a Director for 12 years. Capstone has delivered over 6000 microturbines ranging from 30 kW to 200 kW. Total run time exceeds 20 million hours, including both fixed base and mobility (hybrid) applications.
Prior to Capstone, Robin Mackay spent 24 years at Garrett (now Honeywell) and 6 years at Boeing. At Garrett, his work included adapting Garrett's aviation technologies to industrial use, including subatmospheric gas turbines, closed-cycle gas turbines, and gas-turbine driven heat pumps. At Boeing, he worked on small free-turbine gas turbines, at a time when Boeing dominated that field.
Robin Mackay has ten patents, nine pertaining to gas turbines. He is a graduate of McGill University with a degree in mathematics and economics. He now consults on advanced gas turbines through his company, Agile Turbine Technology, LLC.
Abstract
Diesel engines dominate vehicle propulsion where long life, minimal maintenance and good fuel consumption are critical. But gas turbines are better than diesels in many respects such as weight, volume, maintenance, life, vibration, no water, multi-fuel and most important - emissions. Unfortunately gas turbines burn more fuel than a common-rail diesel at medium and high power, and much more at low power where most vehicles in urban service operate most of the time. Gas turbines are also slow to respond to large step loads and are quite expensive.
Gas turbines using intercooled, recuperated cycles (ICRs) were introduced by Ford in the mid sixties and equaled diesel engines of that era in fuel consumption at medium and high power. Today, ICRs are being developed that offer 44% efficiency from fuel-in to electricity-out at high power levels. With the use of the multi-pressure option, these efficiencies can be held at low power as well. These ICRs are being developed as microturbines with integrated generators for electric drives and as gas turbines with reduction gearboxes for mechanical drives.
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