Iran's Amirkabir University Researchers Develop Troubleshooting System for Gas Microturbine
“Today, microturbines are made by a relatively new technology with a capacity of about 2 to 500 kilowatts, and recently they have been widely favored for distributed generation of electricity,” Seyed Saleh Talebi, a graduate of Amirkabir University of Technology and the manager of the ‘Development of Gas Micro Turbine Troubleshooting System’ project, told ANA.
“Online monitoring of the condition and fault finding based on performance variables allows for early detection of defects in the microturbine, reducing the need for scheduled visits that require the engine to be shut down and removed from the circuit. Therefore, such a troubleshooting method increases the accessibility and reliability of the microturbine as well as its operational life by timely discovery of faults and reduces the operating costs,” he added.
Talebi said that the purpose of implementing this project was to develop a basic performance troubleshooting system for the gas microturbines which can assess the status of the engine components based on the online measurement of the gas path variables and give the necessary warnings.
A microturbine (MT) is a small gas turbine with similar cycles and components to a heavy gas turbine. The MT power-to-weight ratio is better than a heavy gas turbine because the reduction of turbine diameters causes an increase in shaft rotational speed.
Heavy gas turbine generators are too large and too expensive for distributed power applications, so MTs are developed for small-scale power like electrical power generation alone or as combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) systems. The MT are 25 to 500 kilowatt gas turbines evolved from piston engine turbochargers, aircraft auxiliary power units (APU) or small jet engines, the size of a refrigerator.
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