IDGTE Paper 582

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The History of the Industrial Gas Turbine (Part 1 The First Fifty Years 1940-1990)

By Ronald J Hunt CEng FIMechE FIDGTE Thermal Power Consultant Power + Energy Associates Morpeth, United Kingdom

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For discussion at a General Meeting to be held at IDGTE, The Great Northern Hotel, Peterborough PE1 1QL at 14.00 hours on Thursday 20 January 2011

The History of the Industrial Gas Turbine (Part 1 The First Fifty Years 1940-1990) Ronald J Hunt CEng FIMechE FIMechE FIDGTE Thermal Power Consultant Power + Energy Associates Morpeth, United Kingdom

Preamble This account of the history of the industrial gas turbine doc uments the history of the development of gas turbines for land based, locomotive and marine marine applications. A key part of this history is the tabulation tabulation of the manufacturers and models produced produced by year since 1940. The aircraft engine is excluded from the scope of this work and only referred to in relation to the development of industrial machines. It has not been possible, up to the time of publication, to include every company who were active in the development of industrial gas turbine however the research work is continuing and it is planned to add to this history in due course. This paper (Part 1) deals with the first fifty years of development of the industrial gas turbine from 1940 to 1990. It is planned that a second paper (Part 2) will be presented later in 2011 covering the period 1990 onwards. The author recognises that whilst there are already a number of individual historical accounts concerning the development of the industrial gas turbine it hoped that this work will add a broader and more comprehensive perspective perspective to the subject. One published book [53] makes [53] makes the comment that this is a subject with as many opinions on who to credit developments to as there are engineering historians. This author endeavours to give a fair opinion on the credits due and to give due recognition. Acknowledgement and thanks are given to all the companies referred to for their permission to publish the material. Sincere thanks and appreciation is given to the many individual contributors for this work and all who have made significant efforts to support the work and given of their time to provide the data and reference material making this historical historical account possible. Special thanks are given to Steve Reed for his support and the extensive research he has carried out. In addition thanks are given to the numerous librarians and archivists who responded to so many enquiries and provided papers and documents on the subject. A list of acknowledgements acknowledgements is attached. The author wishes to thank the Council and Officers of the Institution of Di esel and Gas Turbine Engineers (IDGTE) for their support, encouragement and assistance in preparing this history especially members of the IDGTE gas turbine committee and the IDGTE heritage committee. In preparing this historical review every effort has been made to report the performance ratings at the time the various models were were introduced. It is recognised that all turbine manufacturers manufacturers are continuously improving gas turbine products in line with ever changing market dynamics therefore the purpose of the history is to illustrate the development history of gas turbines in general and not current ratings. Updates will be included in a later edition (Part 2). Note. This shortened version of the history has been prepared for presentation presentation at the meeting of IDGTE to be held in Peterborough on 20 January 2011 and publishing in the IDGTE Journal “The Power Engineer”. Engineer”. It is planned that the full account of the history history with extensive tables an specifications, including fully detailed contributions by the contributors, will be published in a book in due course.

Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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Printed: 14/01/2011 Paper 582 Version 2

List of Contributors

The Author is indebted to all the following Contributors who have generously contributed papers, information, documents, books, photographs, and especially for sharing their experience and knowledge to make this history what is hoped will prove to be a useful and worthwhile work. John Marshall John Baker Richard Flatman John Kitchenman Ivan Dean Prof. Riti Singh Prof. Peri Pilidus Alan Young Eric Neal Graham Reynolds David Taylor Simon Newman Trevor Wick Brian Tucker Mike Dobson Frank Carchedi Terry Raddings Richard Willows John Bolter Ian Burdon Alan Jarvis Alain Foote Steve Reed Paul Evans Willibald Fischer Volker Leiste Klaas Krijnen Tore Naess Tom L. Lazet Gerry McQuiggan Akio Suzuki

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Anglesey, North Wales, United Kingdom Austin Memories Bedford, United Kingdom Bedford, United Kingdom Burnley, Lancashire Cranfield, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom Cranfield, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom Clydebank, Scotland, United Kingdom Derby, United Kingdom Ansty, Coventry, United Kingdom Ansty, Coventry, United Kingdom Bristol, United Kingdom Filey, Yorkshire, United Kingdom Hampshire, United Kingdom Bedford, United Kingdom Lincoln, United Kingdom Lincoln, United Kingdom Newton Abbot, Devon, United Kingdom Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom Rugby, Warwickshire, United Kingdom Whetstone, United Kingdom Tanygroes, Ceredigion, Wales Erlangen, Germany Erlangen, Germany Rotterdam, Holland Kongsberg, Norway San Diego, California, USA Florida, USA Tokyo, Japan

Proteus Generating Set Austin Gas Turbines W.H. Allen Gas turbines W.H. Allen & RAE(B) Lucas Aerospace Cranfield University Cranfield University John Brown Gas Turbines Rolls Royce Trust Rolls Royce Industrial Gas Turbines Rolls Royce Industrial Gas Turbines Rolls Royce marine Gas Turbines Metrovick Gas Turbines RAE(B) Bedford RAE(B) Bedford Ruston/ Siemens Gas turbines General Electric Gas turbines Centrax Gas turbines C.A. Parsons Gas turbines Merz and McLellan Merz and McLellan English Electric Gas turbines Ruston/ English Electric Museum of Internal Fire Siemens Gas turbines Siemens Gas turbines Steamship Rotterdam Foundation Kongsberg Gas turbines Solar Gas turbines Westinghouse Gas turbines Secretary to ISO Committee

Introduction to the Industrial Gas Turbine th

It is clear that in the 19 Century the concept of the gas turbine became known to many engineers and th the efforts of all the pioneers are well documented. documented. In the early part of the 20 Century several trials took place. Early on it was recognised that this was was a technological concept with huge potential being limited only by the state of art of associated associated technologies and the materials available at that that time. By the late 1930s the concept of the gas turbine had been around for decades with articles already having being published and patents applied for up to 50 years ahead of the realisation of the goal. Experimental gas turbines had been around in various forms since the early 1900s and in a following chapter the efforts of the Pioneers is given given the credit that they deserve. deserve. The question of who came first is also addressed. The early efforts to make the gas gas turbine work often resulted in disappointment as the poor efficiencies initially achieved meant that there was little incentive to take the idea further.


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There was certainly no shortage of vision in the early 1900s, however, as is exampled by Captain H. Riall 1 Sankey who, in his outstanding lecture on Heat Engines given to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in November 1917 [1], [1], predicted the future role of the gas turbine. Sankey could see the continued dominance and development of the steam turbine for some time to come, which at that time had already reached 45MW. In his discussion about the future of power generation he says “…… steam turbines will hold the field for the large units ….… until a satisfactory gas turbine has evolved .” He also mentions that during the past 15 years ( years (that that is 1902-1917 ) “a few experimental turbines have been produced but so far there has been no progress.” progress. ” On reflection what was in itself something really quite amazing was the effort of the British Government in the early 1940s to promote the development of the gas turbine. This effort was applied in so many fields, industrial as well as the aircraft industry. It was at this time that, Harold Roxbee Cox entered into the picture in his government role in charge of the Gas Turbine Collaboration Committee and then Chief Scientific Officer. The government effectively created a race and pulled into the fold all the established established engineering companies pushing this with great determination. There is no doubt that it is Brown Boveri in Switzerland with t heir 4,000kW Neuchatel machine that is credited as being the first practical industrial gas turbine. turbine. The first industrial gas turbine to run in the United Kingdom however was the 500 bhp experimental machine of C A Parsons, which ran in 1945 [5]. [5].

2.

The Work of the Pioneers

Tribute is given to all those pioneers for their true dedication to the development of the industrial gas turbine and working tirelessly to achieve success. There must have been so many disappointments through all the trials and efforts but perseverance eventually bore fruits. Figure fruits. Figure 1 illustrates the influence of the pioneers on the development of the industrial gas turbine with key dates.

Figure 1 The History of The The Industrial Gas Turbine Turbine – The Pioneers

1

Inventor of the Sankey Diagram (1905)


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The claim to the invention of the gas turbine is something that has to date never been resolved. The idea was certainly set out by John Barber in the late 18th century (1791) then incredibly during the following 148 years so many attempts were made to solve the challenge. In this time a number of other patents were lodged and experimental machines were constructed with varying degrees of success. Some of the problems encountered were due to the availability of suitable materials at the time, compressor technology and the construction of compressors of adequate efficiency. In truth then the achievement of the practical industrial gas turbine is due to the work of many contributors. Brief summary biographies of each of the pioneer’s on this roll of honour are below. 1 John Barber (1734 –1801) – British He was born in Nottinghamshire and moved to Warwickshire in the 1760s to manage collieries in the Nuneaton area. He patented several inventions the most remarkable being one in 1791 “A Method of Rising Inflammable Air for the Purposes of Procuring Motion”. This is the patent of a gas turbine. 2 John Dumbell – British He is credited with patenting a device in 1808 having “a series of vanes, or fliers, within a cylinder, like the sails of a windmill, causing them to rotate together with the shaft to which they were fixed ”. [3] [41][71] 3 Bresson – French In Paris in 1837 Bresson had the idea to heat and compress air then deliver this to a combustion chamber and to mix this with fuel gas and then burnt. The combustion products were to be used to drive “a wheel like a water wheel”. [41] 4 Franz Stolze (1836-1910) – German Dr. Stolze took out a patent for gas turbine engine in 1872. This engine used a multi-stage reaction turbine and a multistage axial flow compressor. He called this a “Fire Turbine”. Tests were made in Berlin and trials were carried out between 1900 and 1904 but no success. [2] 5 Sir Charles Algernon Parsons (1854 – 1931) - British Whilst he is best known for the invention of the steam turbine and founding C A Parsons& Co Ltd of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1884, along with his celebrated steam turbine patents, Parsons patented his idea for the gas turbine, which he called a Multiple Motor. In addition to steam turbines, by the early 1900s, Parsons was designing and manufacturing industrial compressors. 6 Rene Armengaud and Charles Lemale - French In 1903 they built and successfully tested the first of several experimental gas turbines with internally water cooled disks and blades. [50] 7 Dr. Holzwarth In 1905 Dr Holzwarth proposed an explosion (constant volume) turbine. A prototype was built and experiments were carried out between 1909 and 1913 [2]. This worked without a compressor. Several of these turbines were built but not put into commercial use. 8 Matthew Henry Phineas Riall Sankey (1853-1925) - Irish He was an Irish engineer from County Cork who invented the Sankey Diagram. He became President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and was able to recognise the future role of the gas turbine as early as 1917.


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9 Charles Gordon Curtis (1860-1953) - American Born in Boston, Massachusetts he patented the first US gas turbine in 1899. Among his other achievements was the Curtis steam turbine of 1896. He sold the rights to the turbine to GE in 1901. 10 Prof. Aurel Boleslav Stodola (1859 –1942) - Swiss He was Slovak by birth and he was a pioneer in thermodynamics and its applications. His published book in 1903 had an appendix on gas turbines. He was invited by Brown Boveri to commission and test the world’s first industrial gas turbine at Neuchâtel in 1940. 11 Charles Brown (1863-1924) British/ Swiss Charles Brown was co-founder of the Brown Boveri Company in 1891 in Baden, Switzerland. He was born in Winterthur and his father was a British engineer who founded the SLM Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works. 12 Walter Boveri (1865-1924) German/ Swiss Walter Boveri was co-founder of the Brown Boveri Company in 1891 in Baden, Switzerland. He was born in Bamberg, Bavaria and died in Baden, Switzerland. 13 Aegidius Elling (1861 –1949) Norwegian Norwegian inventor considered in some quarters to be the father of the gas turbine. In 1903 he designed and constructed the first constant pressure gas turbine. His first machine had an output of 11hp and the second 44hp. [40] 14 Auguste Camille Rateau (1863 –1930) French He is associated with the work of Lemale and Armengaud and designed the compressor for their gas turbine. His work was largely on compressors and founded Rateau Industries. 15 Sanford Alexander Moss (1872 – 1946) American After graduation he joined GE where he carried out research into compressor design. Due to the low overall efficiencies achieved at the time GE ended his work on gas turbines in 1907. [40] 16 Jakob Ackeret (1898-1981) Swiss He worked at Escher Wyss AG in Zurich as Chief Engineer of Hydraulics and was considered as an expert on gas turbines; known for his research on axial flow compressors, airfoil t heory, aerodynamics and highspeed propulsion problems. He is recognised as a pioneer of modern aerodynamics. [58] 17 Sir Harold Roxbee Cox (1902 –1997) British He was a British aeronautical engineer who became chief scientific officer for the British Government. In 1944 he became both chairman and managing director of the t hen nationalised Power Jets. Power Jets was restyled again in 1946 as the National Gas Turbine Establishment with Roxbee Cox as its director. 18 Alan Howard (1905 –1966) American He worked for the GE Company in Schenectady, NY and the steam turbine activities of the company. He is considered as the key figure in GE efforts to develop the gas turbine as he was appointed to a wartime committee part of the general wartime effort to develop gas turbines for military aircraft propulsion. 19 Basil Wood (1905 –1992) British He worked with the consulting firm of Merz and McLellan. He was highly respected as an engineer and regarded as an expert in all matters relating to gas turbines. For many years he edited the gas turbine section of Kemps Yearbook. In 1970 he became President of the Diesel Engine Users Association (IDGTE).


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20 Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle (1907 –1996) British Known as the inventor of the Jet Engine, he was a British Royal Air Force (RAF) engineer officer who shared credit with Germany's Dr. Hans Von Ohain for independently inventing the jet engine. Whittle is hailed as the father of jet propulsion and the contribution he made to the development of the industrial gas turbine was significant, 21 Geoffrey Bertram Robert Feilden (1917 –2004) British Bob Feilden worked with Power Jets. After that he moved to Ruston & Hornsby in Lincoln to produce the first Ruston type TA gas turbine. Later in life he was the author of a widely acclaimed work on engineering design for which he is highly regarded. 22 Dr. Waheeb Rizk (1921-2009) He was born in Cairo and was educated in Cairo and then Cambridge University. After graduating he carried out research. He joined the English Electric Company in 1954, to become a founder member of the mechanical engineering laboratory at Whetstone, Leicester and in 1957 was made chief engineer of the gas turbine division. 23 Prof. Dr. Rudolf Friedrich (1909-1998) German Rudolf Friedrich was employed by Siemens from 1948 – 1964. He was Chief Technical Officer for gas turbines at Siemens-Schuckert Works in Mülheim /Ruhr. From 1964 – 1976 he was full professor for turbine technology at Karlsruhe technical university. He has been given the nickname “Mr. Siemens-Gas Turbine” by his colleagues. 24 Andrew T. Bowden ( -1968) British Graduated at Herriot-Watt, Edinburgh and went on to gain a PhD on the characteristics of solid injection. He became Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering in Western Australia. In 1939 he returned to the UK where he became Assistant Director of Tank Design at the Ministry of Supply and after the war he joined C A Parsons as Chief Research Engineer setting set up the Gas Turbine Department and recruiting a team of engineers. In 1955 he became Research Director. 25 Dr. Claude Seippel (1900-1986) Swiss He was employed by Brown Boveri and in 1939 the person in charge of conceptual design for the Neuchatel gas turbine plant. Some sources refer to Prof. Stodola as the Neuchatel designer however the evidence suggests that Dr. Sieppel should have the credit. Brown Boveri honoured him by naming their research centre at Daetwill, Baden after him. 26 John Lamb (1890-1958) British He was a pioneer marine engineer who was Chief Engineer of the Anglo Saxon Petroleum company [48]. In 1951 he arranged for one of t he diesel-electric engines on the tanker Auris to be replaced by a gas turbine. He then carried out sea going trials with this ship and presented the results to the Institute of Marine Engineers in October 1953 [10] [48].

3.

Technology Developments

3.1

Landmark Technical Papers

The development of the industrial gas turbine has come about as a result of the development of a large number of technologies and research into materials enabling the improvement in operating conditions. These have been described over the years in a number of landmark technical papers, a few of which are mentioned below and others in the references. Refer to Figure 2. In February 1939 Dr. Adolf Meyer from Brown Boveri presented his outstanding paper on The Combustion Gas Turbine: Its History, Developments and Prospects [2] to the Institution of Mechanical Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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Engineers in London. This presentation coincided with the introduction of the first practical industrial gas turbine by that company in 1939. In June 1948 at a meeting of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London A.T. Bowden and J.L. Jefferson of C A Parsons presented their paper on the Design and Operation of the Parsons Experimental Gas Turbine [5]. The Parsons paper presents a detailed, no holds barred account of the gas turbine experimental work carried out at the Heaton Works of C.A. Parson in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Figure 2 The Six Ages of Development 2

Over the years the Institution of Diesel and Gas Turbine Engineers (ID GTE) has presented many milestone papers on the design, development and application of the gas turbine. The first was given by Mr. R.J. Welsh of the English Electric Company, presented in London in November 1948. Then in 1954 E.A. Kerez of Brown Boveri presented his paper on the Benzau Power Station. In 1951, at the time of The Festival of B ritain, a document was published by Power Jets (Research and Development) called the “The Story of the British Gas Turbine”. An account was presented by the British National Committee at the World Power Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1954[13]. This started with the work of John Barber and Charles Parsons and describes British gas turbine developments in power generation, traction, automotive engines and aircraft engines. Around 1965, as mentioned in the paper of Dr. Seippel [15], there appeared to have been a serious debate at that time as to whether the industrial gas turbine was economically viable. At the same time it was recognised that the climb in gas turbine outputs had been spectacular. Dr. Seippel introduced the “combined gas-steam cycles” concept and this was immediately met by doubts as to the vi ability of such schemes.

2

Formerly the Diesel Engine Users Association (DEUA).


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3.2

Cycles and Configurations

From the start of the development of the gas turbine researchers have considered whether to adopt either the open cycle or closed cycle, the primary proponents of the closed cycle being the Swiss. The advantages seen for the closed cycle were no need for compressor intake filtration and reduced gas path dimensions due to the higher working pressures. The capability of the closed cycle to burn otherwise unsuitable fuels was another big incentive. The disadvantages turned out to be the cost of building these complex plants, limitations on the gas circuit materials resulting in lower turbine inlet temperatures and lower efficiencies. The two alternatives were the closed cycle air cycle and the closed cycle helium cycle. In collaboration with others, Escher Wyss pioneered the closed cycle, built 24 of these with varying success, and mostly for combined power and district heating applications. A significant merit of the closed cycle was claimed to be that the load was varied by altering the pressure in the closed circuit whilst maintaining the turbine inlet temperature at the full load value, so giving almost full load efficiency over the load range. Early developers made every possible effort to improve efficiency and to make the gas turbine economically viable and they looked into inter-cooling, exhaust heat recovery and recuperation. The configurations considered were: (1) Open Cycle Single Shaft without Exhaust Heat Recuperation (2) Open Cycle Two Shafts without Exhaust Heat Recuperation (3) Open Cycle Single Shaft with Exhaust Heat Recuperation (4) Open Cycle Two Shafts with Exhaust Heat Recuperation (5) Open Cycle Single Shaft with Exhaust Heat Recuperation and Inter-cooling (6) Open Cycle Two Shaft with Exhaust Heat Recuperation and Inter-cooling (7) Open Cycle Three Shaft with Exhaust Heat Recuperation and Inter-cooling (8) Closed Cycle Air - CLAGT (9) Closed Cycle Helium – CLHGT (10)Combined Cycle Steam and Gas Turbines - CCGT The efforts of those promoting closed cycle plants to compete against open cycle lasted only till about 1975 and then finally it was the merging of different companies that sealed to fate of the closed cycle. By that time CCGT was already getting well established and higher operating conditions for the open cycle meant that the goal of beating the conventional cycle would follow the CCGT route. In the meanwhile everyone was striving to improve both compressor and turbine efficiencies and to increase turbine inlet temperatures and pressure ratios. After a period of about 10-15 years (1940-1955), the general industry trend for industrial gas turbine configurations has been to move to simple single shaft options without inter-cooling. On the other hand, in the aero engine world, the trend has been towards inter-cooled and multiple shaft arrangements with separate power turbines. This trend is also seen in the aero-derivatives that are currently on the market. 3.3

Unit Outputs

All who have studied the development of the gas turbine will know that starting from only 4,000kW in 1939 the output of the industrial gas turbine has grown in size phenomenally to around 250,000kW by the late 1990s and to over 300,000kW presently. In the 60 year period, 1939-1999, the simple cycle output of the industrial gas turbine has increased 60 fold as shown by Figure 3. There are of course two groups of companies one being the small machine group all of whom are targeting the small industrial market the size of these units being dictated by use. The other is the large


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machines group who continue to seek to dominate the market for thermal power generation and take over from conventional cycles as Riall Sankey had predicted in 1917. 3.4

Operational Conditions

It has been known from the earliest experiments that higher efficiency was linked to the achievable turbine inlet temperatures. There is evidence of considerable discussion amongst the pioneers about the inlet temperature that could be achieved safely with the available heat resisting steels at the time. This led to many ingenious and complicated schemes for cooling of the hot gas path components initially with water passages. It was always going to be a combination of materials, thermal barrier coatings and cooling technologies that would push the gas turbine forward and enable higher and higher inlet temperatures to be achieved.

Figure 3 Technology Trends – Unit Outputs

A review of the achieved turbine inlet temperatures from this historical research is shown in Figure 4. Two additional lines have been added from the book by Meherwan Boyce [47]. Aero engine data shows that, whilst the industrial gas turbine inlet temperatures have been consistently well below those of aero engines convergence is taking place. When the Neuchatel gas turbine power plant was put into service in 1940 the operational conditions for the gas turbine cycle included a turbine inlet temperature of 550°C and pressure ratio of 4.2:1. In his 1939 paper Dr Meyer was comparing inlet conditions of 538°C (1000°F), 649°C (1200°F) and 816°C (1500°F). He stated that 1000°F (538°C) was absolutely safe for uncooled blades made of the available heat resisting steel. Then he went on to say that he could foresee the prospect of the gas turbine inlet temperature being increased to 816°C(1500°F). As seen in Figure 4 this came about within 20 years. It was not until the late 1950s that turbine inlet temperatures for industrial gas turbines exceeded the 816°C (1500°F) level. It was Siemens who broke away from the trend in 1957. The whole field has continued to steadily increase inlet temperatures by roughly about 100°C for every 10 years. By the late 1990s turbine inlet temperatures of approximately 1300°C were being achieved.


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HISTORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL GAS TURBINE TURBINE INLET TEMPERATURE TREND

1800 1700 1600 1500 C G E 1400 D E R 1300 U T A R 1200 E P M E 1100 T T E L N 1000 I E N I B 900 R U T

Aero Engines

1316

1124 1068

899

Industrial Gas Turbine Research 816

800

760

700 600 550

500 1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

YEAR

Boyce data - extracted from Gas Turbine Engineering Handbook 3rd Edition

Hi st or y R es ea rch Da ta

B oy ce Aero

B oy ce Ind us tr ia l

Figure 4 Technology Trends – Temperature

3.5

Pressure Ratio

Pressure ratios of the gas turbine compressor have increased by about 2 units each decade from 1940 however since about 1985 there appears to be a convergence as all machines large and small fall in the same band. The actual progress of gas turbine compressor pressure ratios for industrial machines is illustrated in Figure 5.

HISTORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL GAS TURBINE COMPRESSOR PRESSURE RATIO

35.0 30.0

30.0

O 25.0 I T A R E R U S 20.0 S E R P R O S S E 15.0 R P M O C

15.7 14.0

9.4

10.0 6.5

5.0

4.2

5.0

0.0 0 9 4 1

0 5 9 1

0 6 9 1

0 7 9 1

0 8 9 1

0 9 9 1

0 0 0 2

YEAR

Figure 5 Technology Trends – Pressure Ratio

Aero-engines operate at a higher pressure ratio than industrial gas turbines and in the aircraft engine field, modern turbofan engines operate as high as 44:1. Consequently, those aero-derivative gas turbines that have been modified for land based power generation applications also o perate with similarly high pressure ratios.


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3.6

Thermal Efficiencies

The Neuchatel power plant achieved a noteworthy compressor efficiency of 88%, turbine efficiency of 89% and a thermal efficiency of 17.4 (18.6) %. Associated with the increase in turbine inlet temperatures the corresponding overall cycle efficiency was foreseen in 1939 to rise from 1 8% to 26%. The achievement of 26% overall efficiency took about 20 years and the step by step increase actually achieved is illustrated in Figure 6. At the time of the emergence of the industrial gas turbine in 1939 the thermal efficiency was 17-18 % and this was being compared with steam cycle efficiencies of 25-26 % of that day. As we well know, over the following years the steam cycle thermal efficiency continued to improve always keeping ahead of the simple cycle gas turbine until around 2000 when advanced class gas turbines became operational. This race between the gas turbine and the conventional steam cycle efficiency was effectively halted in the 1960s when the combined gas turbine steam turbine cycle started pushing plant thermal efficiencies over 40% and beyond.

HISTORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL GAS TURBINE OVERALL THERMAL EFFICIENCY (SC) 45.0

38.6

40.0

34.4

35.0

% ) C S 30.0 ( Y C N E I C 25.0 I F F E L A M 20.0 R E H T L 15.0 L A R E V O 10.0

31.5 27.3 25.8 24.0

17.4

5.0

0.0

0 9 4 1

0 5 9 1

0 6 9 1

0 7 9 1

0 8 9 1

0 9 9 1

0 0 0 2

YEAR

Figure 6 Technology Trends – Thermal Efficiency

3.7

Materials and Cooling

Owing to the complexity of the Metallurgy and Materials Sciences it is only possible to touch briefly in this historical review on the impact that these have had on gas turbine technology and in particular on higher firing temperatures. As with the steam turbine, the gas turbine stage 1 blade (bucket) has to withstand the highest temperatures, stresses in the turbine, and is therefore considered to be the limiting component. Progress is illustrated in Figure 7. In the early 1940s high grade heat-resisting steels were not available so steel temperatures were limited to 1050F (566C) for continuous running. Advances in materials accounted for the majority of the firing temperature increase until air cooling was introduced in the 1970s. These increases enabled increased firing temperatures, increased output and improved thermal efficiency. During the early 1950s the National Gas Turbine Establishment (NGTE) was carrying out experiments into the air cooling of gas turbine blades (buckets). This shows that the present day methods of air cooling were being developed in 1953.


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Figure 7 Technology Trends – Material Limits

In the 1951 paper on the Ruston 750kW gas turbine [9] it is mentioned that air cooling of turbine discs had been employed. o

In addition to the limit on the material capability metal temperatures above 870 C have resulted in the need to apply thermal barrier coatings due to hot corrosion effects. 3.8

Emissions

Over the years Gas Turbine emissions have gradually become more important and in particular NOX. The United Kingdom and the EU had no statutory requirements for gas turbines until the early 1990s.

Figure 8 Technology Trends – Emissions

It is Tokyo and California that seem to have been leading the trend for lower and lower permissible limits. As seen from Figure 8 in 1970 a value of 75 ppmv was considered acceptable, by 1980 this had been reduced to 50 ppmv for California and 15 ppmv for Tokyo. By 1990 everyone was asking for 15 ppmv or better. Reference Fig 5 [36] Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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4.

Gas Turbine Applications and Fuels

Although the prime area of interest in the gas turbine in the early years was aircraft engines and l and based power generation, almost immediately the industrial gas turbine had become a reality the applications being exploited seemed limitless. Economics drove engineers to look at a wide range of fuels and many different applications and alternative fuels were being trialled. In addition to direct power generation the applications for the industrial gas turbine in 1940 immediately included Locomotive Engines, Blast Furnace Blowers, Marine Propulsion, Road Vehicle Engines and Mechanical Drives.

Motor Car 125hp

Railway Locomotive 1,800kW

Aircraft Carrier 72,000kW

50hp Turbine

Bluebird Car 3,320kW

375,000kW Gas Turbine

4.1

Marine Propulsion

In 1947 a Metrovick F2 axial-flow jet engine, known as the Beryl engine, was installed in the MGB2009 to become the worlds first ever gas turbine propelled sea going vessel. 1951 The first ever merchant vessel to be fitted with a gas turbine propulsion system was the Anglo Saxon Petroleum Company Tanker “Auris” 12,000 tons d.w with a BTH 1200hp gas turbine 1953 Rolls-Royce designed the RM60 gas turbine rated at 4,000kW; which was installed in the British naval vessel HMS Grey Goose. The worlds first ever solely gas turbine propelled ship 1956 A GE FS3 gas turbine of 6000hp (4,500kW) was installed in the US Maritime Administration vessel, the John Sargent, to become the first US vessel to be gas turbine powered 1958 Three Bristol Proteus engines were employed in a fast patrol boat. HMS Brave Borderer starts sea trials fitted with the Rolls-Royce Proteus GT 1967 The British Royal navy decided to use gas turbine propulsion for all future warships 1969 The first GE LM2500 aero derivative enters service with US Navy 1968 A Bristol Siddeley Olympus was installed in the RN vessel HMS Exmouth 1980 All propulsion power for the HMS Invincible, HMS Illustrious and HMS Ark Royal aircraft carriers provided by four Olympus engines on each ship, providing 72,000kW total shaft power


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The 1967 decision of the Royal Navy to only use gas turbines for propulsion was quite a milestone in itself. Today all gas turbine manufacturers have marine variants of their gas turbines and aero derivatives have now found a real place in marine propulsion. About 7% of the gas turbine market is for marine applications.

4.2

Road Vehicle Engines

The application of gas turbines to road vehicles was a real quest in the late 1940s and 1950s. First off the mark was Centrax who designed and manufactured a 160hp engine in 1948 for use as a truck engine. The Rover Company became famous for producing the Rover gas turbine car. The Rover gas turbine car JET1 with 100bhp was first demonstrated to the public in March 1950 achieving a speed of 85 mph. The updated version with an engine of 230 bhp went on to achieve a speed of 152 mph. This certainly gained public attention. [74] Work was started by Austin on the gas turbine in 1952 and their first unit ran in 1954 using a Rolls-Royce Merlin supercharger as a compressor. Leyland, the successor of Austin, developed a gas turbine powered truck. A specially designed Parsons 1000hp (746kW) gas turbine was installed in the Conqueror tank in 1954. In 1956 Donald Campbell’s “Bluebird” was powered by a Bristol Siddeley “Proteus” engine rated at 3,320kW. The initial test in the USA did not succeed but during a new attempt in 1964 the car reached 429mph during tests at Lake Eyre, Australia. 4.3

Locomotive Engines

A very early start was made on applying the gas turbine to railway locomotive use. There was considerable progress made, however eventually the ultimate fate of gas turbine powered locomotives was to be sealed as soon as the price of fuel oil became too high. COUNTRY

MANUFACTURER

SWISS FEDERAL RAILWAYS

BROWN BOVERI & CO

BRITISH RAILWAYS

YEAR INTRODUCED

YEAR WITHDRAWN

MODEL

ENGINE POWER KW

1941

GTEL

1620

BROWN BOVERI & CO

1949

BR18000

1840

(GREAT WESTERN RAIL)

METROVICK

1951

BR18100

2200

(NORTH BRITISH)

C A PARSONS

1952

ENGLISH ELECTRIC

1961

1959

FUEL

FUEL OIL COAL

GT3 EM-27

BRITISH LEYLAND

APT-E

FRANCE

ALSTHOM

UNITED STATES

GENERAL ELECTRIC

1950

1969

GE

UNION PACIFIC

WESTINGHOUSE

1950

1953

WH

CANADA

PLANNED

2002

NA

2006

I/S

GEM-10

1000

LNG

2007

I/S

GT1-001

8300

LNG

RUSSIA

TGV-GT RESIDUAL 1500*2 (Jet train)

Table 1 Gas Turbine Powered Locomotives

In 1939 Brown Boveri was already well advanced with the design of gas turbine powered locomotives and their first gas turbine powered locomotive at 1,620kW was delivered in 1941. In the UK the first was the BR18000 1,800kW unit from Brown Boveri for the Great Western Railway, delivered in 1949. In 1951 Metrovick built the BR18100 2,200kW engine based on an aircraft engine. Then in 1961 English Electric built the GT3 locomotive with an EM27 engine. The last to be built in the UK was the British Rail APT-E prototype using a British Leyland gas turbine.


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Both Westinghouse and GE developed gas turbine locomotives. In 1951 the Union Pacific Railroad had a GE FS3 gas turbine powered locomotive rated at 8,500hp (6,300kW). They succeeded with a large fleet of gas turbine locomotives; operated by Union Pacific, these running successfully from 1950 to 1 969. In July 1952 C A Parsons received an order from the Ministry of Fuel & Power to design and construct a prototype coal burning gas turbine locomotive for the North British Railway. This locomotive was to be ready for trials in 1954 and was a joint contract with the North British Locomotive Company of Glasgow, it was to run on British Rail. The testing of the gas turbine unit mounted on the loco frame was carried out at Parsons' Heaton Works, Newcastle. After trials the project closed down in March 1959. [37] The first version of the TGV in France was TGV 001 gas turbine electric (GTEL) built by Alsthom and first commissioned in 1969. The TGV rail trials were carried out from 1972-1978 and the gas turbine powered unit achieved a record 318 km/h (200 mph) on 8 December 1972. Only one gas turbine set was built. In Russia from 1959 to 1970 there were two 2,600kW gas turbine powered locomotives under test. Then in 2006 Russia introduced a 1,000kW LNG fired GTEL and in 2007 an 8,300kW GTEL. Today these are the only gas turbine locomotives in service. 4.4

Power Station Standby and Peak Lopping

In the early 1960s a severe Grid disturbance led to electricity black-outs over the south east of England. This, together with the predicted load growth at the time, made it necessary for the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) to install quick starting gas turbines suitable for peaking duties. This is described in the paper by R.G Henbest delivered to DUEA (IDGTE) in 1970 [46]. A new application for gas turbines was found in 1962 when CEGB decided to install fast start gas turbines using aero engines as gas generators and free power turbines. The gas generators used were the Bristol Siddeley Olympus and Rolls Royce Avon engines. The first installation tested was a single Olympus engine installed at Hams Hall power station in 1964. Following this trial a major programme of installation got under way. A few were built with Pratt & Whitney FT8 engines. There were three main contractors at the time these being AEI, Bristol Siddeley and English Electric/ GEC. The configurations adopted were: AEI AEI BS BS EE EE EE

4 Avon + PT 1 Avon + PT 4 Olympus + PT 1 Olympus + PT 4 Avon + 2PT 2 Avon + PT 1 Avon + PT

55MW Peak (40MW Base) 14MW Peak (10MW Base) 70MW Peak ( MW Base) 17.5MW Peak ( MW Base) 56MW Peak (40MW Base) 28MW Peak (20MW Base) 13.5MW Peak (10MW Base)

It was not all plain sailing for these peak load sets. Initially the aero engines were installed as designed then it was found that the new operational conditions faced by operating these engines in a land based power station environment showed up unforeseen problems. 4.5

Mechanical Drive

Whilst a large part of industrial gas turbine development activity has been directed to power generation and marine applications, from the earliest days gas turbines have been used for mechanical drive. In 1946 Solar Turbines produced 35kW portable gas turbine driven pump for the US Navy, this was used for fire fighting duties. The 1949 the 2,170bhp (2022kW) Air Bleed unit of C A Parsons was in fact a gas turbine driven compressor. Rover gas turbines were manufactured for a variety of stationary


- 15 -


applications including emergency pumps. The Austin engine was put on the market in 1961 as an independent prime mover and pump drive. Today about 30% of the gas turbine market is for mechanical drive applications. 4.6

Total Energy – Combined Heat and Power – Cogeneration

In the 1960s Total Energy became popular. Today this is better known as Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and in some parts of the World as Cogeneration. These schemes usually mean the combined production of electricity and heat for process or other uses. Today Cogeneration has been extended to mean the combined production of electricity and heat or cooling; and occasionally “Trigeneration”. As long ago as 1956 Ruston installed a turbine in a combined heat and power scheme in a large shopping complex in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. Over the years the application of gas turbines to combined heat and power/ cogeneration has grown enormously. Wherever there is a significant demand for heat (or cooling) the appropriate CHP/ Cogen is applied and a large number of these are gas turbine based. 4.7

Combined Cycle

A combined cycle power plant is a plant that produces electricity from gas and steam turbines. The gas turbine drives an electrical generator and the exhaust gas energy from the gas turbine is used to generate steam in a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) which then produces electricity from a steam turbine. The advent of the combined gas and steam cycle (CCGT) has enabled the gas turbine to leap to prominence as a primary power generator. The combined cycle was foreseen by Dr. Meyer in his 1939 paper and lots of applications were found to recover gas turbine exhaust heat. It was not however until around 1965 that CCGT became a serious contender. The beginnings of combined cycle are described in the 1970 paper of Basil Wood [19]. 1960 BBC - Korneuburg, Austria 75MW (2+1 configuration) 1963 Horsehoe Lake, Oklahoma 1965 Siemens – Hohe Wand Austria 12.8MW 1968 GE - Wolverine Cooperative 21MW (1+1 configuration) 1979 Siemens – Bang Pakong Thailand 250MW (2+1 configuration) Since 1968 onwards the CCGT cycle has made steady progress and together with CCGT the gas turbine has overtaken the conventional cycle reaching unbelievably high cycle thermal efficiencies. In the UK the first CCGT was the Roosecote Station in Cumbria commissioned in 1991 producing 224,000kW with a thermal efficiency of 49%. 4.8

The Educational Units

A large number of small gas turbines have been produced for educational purposes. These were sold in significant numbers to colleges and universities around the world. Between 1955 and 1965 the Rover Company manufactured more than 250 small gas turbines (60hp) for educational establishments. In addition to colleges and universities around the UK they were sent to 40 countries worldwide from Australia to Uruguay. 4.9

Gas Turbine Fuel Options

Light oil and diesel started as the preferred fuels however from very early in the life of the gas turbine economics were pushing the need to burn a wide range of fuels. All of the following have been tried with varying success. What has changed since of course is the availability of natural gas.


- 16 -


4.9.1

Heavy Oil / Crude

In trials of the 1940s gas oil was used and heavier grades of fuel oil, some resulting in serious ash deposition [5]. Since then various other liquid fuels including heavy oil, crude, Naptha and others have been used extensively in gas turbines incurring penalties on maintenance intervals and costs. The oil producing states of the Middle East pushed the use of Crude Oil for direct burning in gas turbines and from the 1970s this became quite normal however the cost of maintaining such turbines was high due to corrosion and deposition. Degradation of output performance could be up to 15%. Fuel treatment was found to be an effective means of handling these fuels but again at a cost. It is generally agreed that not all gas turbines are suitable for burning heavy oils and crude. 4.9.2

Coal

By 1939 work was already under way testing gas turbines with coal. One paper stated that an experimental gas turbine set had been run on pulverised fuel for many months at the Brown Boveri testing plant. In the UK during the 1950s a great deal of effort was employed on gas turbine coal burning trials; these being reported by C A Parsons, Ruston, Metrovick and others. In Canada the government awarded a contract to McGill University in 1950 to construct an experimental coal burning locomotive. In 1961 Union Pacific in the USA made trials with UP80 an experimental coal burning gas turbine (GTEL) locomotive. These were not successful. The Escher Wyss closed cycle was much more successful in burning coal in conjunction with the gas turbine. These closed cycle plants burning coal were built in Germany, Russia and the UK from 1950 – 1963. In 1999 the US DOE (Office of Industrial Technologies Energy Efficiency) promoted a Coal-Fired Air Turbine (CAT) Cycle Plant to deliver more than 40% efficiency, currently at the feasibility study stage. The process that does overcome the difficulty of burning coal in gas turbines is Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC). IGCC is already well proven, converting coal into a clean gas (known as Syngas) and able to achieve better than 45% efficiency. 4.9.3

Peat

In the days before the dilemma on the depletion of Peat resources it was foreseen that Peat could be used for power generation. The concept was promoted by the British Government for the North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board. The process required the Peat to be milled and then passed to the combustors on the gas turbine. The first open cycle gas turbine to run on Peat was built by Ruston & Hornsby [9] in 1949. A test facility was constructed in Lincoln and tests carried out in 1952 and 1953. The systems were developed to the extent that a full scale trial in Scotland was envisaged. At the same time John Brown, developed a gas turbine using Escher Wyss closed cycle technology and carried out trials in their works in 1950. They went on to install two peat burning plants in Scotland, one at Altnabreac and the other Dundee. Work was stopped on the peat plants around 1960 due to the relative cost of producing electricity from Peat being significantly higher than conventional methods. 4.9.4

Blast Furnace Gas

Gas turbines have been successfully modified to burn blast furnace gas (BFG). This was known to be possible during the 1930s. Blast furnace gas has major drawbacks for gas turbines as it is of low calorific value resulting in huge gas volumes and contains significant amounts of dust. In 1955 a Westinghouse W201 machine was modified as a blast furnace gas blower and fired on blast furnace gas. There were 30 BFG fired gas turbines reported to be installed in Europe from 1950 to 1965. Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

- 17 -


In 1958 MHI supplied their first BFG f ired gas turbine, this was an 850kW machine fro Nippon Steel. Since then and up to 2004 MHI has been really successful in this f ield supplying another 12 BFG fired gas turbines, the sizes increasing to 180,000kW [45]. 4.9.5

Natural Gas

Natural gas is widely considered as a clean fuel, easy to burn and good for gas turbines. Until the early 1980s natural gas was not available for power generation. The exception to this was the Middle East where oil producing states had huge quantities of residual gas to burn. Until the gas turbine came along this gas was just disposed of by burning by flare. A memorable sight of the Gulf in the late 1970s was the large number of flares burning across the Middle East. At that time even the gas turbine power plants of the Middle East were either distillate or Crude fired. The oil crisis of 1973 became the driver for the petroleum industry to develop new oil fields and the result of this was natural gas becoming available in sufficient quantities to burn in gas turbines. In the beginning the supply of natural gas was largely on an interruptible basis hence every power generation gas turbine needed to be dual fired and have a back up fuel supply. This gradually changed as natural gas was discovered in bigger quantities and the oil companies began recovering residual gas and creating gas grids to deliver the gas to power plants. Slowly the need for oil as a standby fuel has diminished and many gas turbines now rely solely on the natural gas grid. 5.

British Industrial Gas Turbine Companies

By far the largest group of companies and organisations active in the f ield of the industrial gas turbine during the period 1940-1990 were British. The book “The Industrial Gas Turbine” by Dr E.C. Roberson, published in 1951[6], has twelve British manufacturers listed as already active in industrial gas turbine manufacture. The research for this publication has shown that in the 1950s there were in fact 18 British companies directly involved in the design and manufacture of the industrial gas turbine. A code is introduced here to assist with the cataloguing and listing o f all the gas turbine manufacturing companies. The full list of the companies of all nationalities and reference codes is provided in Table 4.

A1

W.H. Allen

The W.H. Allen Company was based in Bedford, United Kingdom and members of the W.H. Allen heritage group have kindly contributed to this history by providing information, tables and technical papers. In 1947, in cooperation with Bristol Aero Engines, Allen’s produced a 1,000kW set. This set was designed for the Admiralty as a marine auxiliary unit and had a separate power turbine. They also produced a 150kW gas turbine driven alternator designed for emergency standby and peaking purposes [13]. It was the Admiralty that persuaded Allen’s to set up its own Gas Turbine department. This team was under the leadership of Arthur Pope, a former member of the Power Jets team, then working for the Bristol Aeroplane Company under Roy Fedden. A Design Consultancy Agreement was concluded with Bristol and almost immediately a contract from the Admiralty to develop a: 1,000kW gas turbine generator set for base load operation Design work on the Allen 1,000kW engine commenced early in 1948 and the unit was successfully run at full speed and power early in 1951. As conceived, the unit had an axial compressor of 4.25/1 pressure ratio driven by a 2 stage turbine; tubular combustion chambers disposed symmetrically around the engine; an annular two-pass cross-flow heat exchanger and a separate single stage power turbine. The engine layout was determined largely by the Admiralty space requirements. Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

- 18 -


Due to changes in Warship design only one example was ever built. The engine was run initially at Bedford and then mainly at NGTE (Pyestock) where it accumulated some 4000 hrs running. Most of this was satisfactory with the exception of the heat exchanger. It was found that this needed greater flexibility to accommodate thermal expansion and a more corrosion resistant tube material. Admiralty Emergency Generator of 125KW This simple engine was designed for short term use, low cost and bulk being more important than low fuel consumption. This engine had a centrifugal compressor and radial turbine machined from a common forging. A single large combustion chamber was mounted vertically above the turbine volute. Output to the epicyclic gear was taken from the compressor end. The rotor configuration emerged from a series of studies, which indicated that large amounts of cooling air would be required to cool a conventional separate turbine disc. Later work included: 500kW Marine Auxiliary Generator During the early 1950s, following the satisfactory running of the 1,000kW set and the review of Admiralty policy, a 500kW base load set was required for a weight of about 2 tons and a thermal efficiency of not less than 20%. This challenging specification resulted in a design study considering three configurations in some detail. These were an Intercooled Compound Engine with Alternator on HP spool, an Intercooled Compound Engine with Heat Exchanger and a Single Shaft Core + Free Power Turbine + Heat Exchanger. The selected compound intercooled engine had two spools. The prototype engine was installed in HMS Llandaff, a new diesel powered F rigate. Production Engines were installed in the County Class Destroyers, and in the Tribal Class Frigates. The Tribal Class Frigates totalled seven in all and these were commissioned between November 1961 and April 1967. Due to the lack of ships to protect home waters, whilst the Falklands Task Force was in the South Atlantic at least three of the Tribals were taken off the reserve list and refitted in some haste in 1981/2. Three of the Tribal class were sold to Indonesia in 1986 following an extensive refit at Vosper Thorneycroft's yard. 350kW Marine Auxiliary Generator The 350kW machine was introduced in 1956 as a marine auxiliary set. One of these units was installed on the cruise ship S.S. Rotterdam in 1959 where it remained until 2007. The S.S. Rotterdam had been moored for a number of years in Freetown, Barbados. The ship was eventually purchased by the Steamship Rotterdam Foundation and brought back to Holland for restoration as a floating museum. Initially is was thought that the Allen gas turbine was still on board S .S. Rotterdam however during this research a message was received from the Foundation sincerely regretting that the engine had been scrapped. From the summer of 2002 until the summer of 2006 the foundation had corresponded with the Roll-Royce Heritage Trust. All concerned were fully aware of the uniqueness of the engine, and had tried to keep her on board as a part of the museum. Unfortunately this contact did not lead to the rescue of the engine and in 2007 the engine was removed from the ship and subsequently was scrapped. According to Michael Lane's History of Queen's Engineering Works, the numbers of Allen Gas Turbines produced were no more than about 35 sets in all. The Gas Turbine department was finally run down in 1964 on completion of the generating sets for the County Class Destroyers. As a result of a merger in 1968 W.H. Allen became part of Amalgamated Power Engineering (APE) and in 1981 the APE group was taken over by Northern Engineering Industries (NEI). Finally in 1989 Rolls-Royce


- 19 -


acquired the NEI group. The Bedford works were closed in the year 2000 bringing to an end 106 years of manufacturing on the site.

A5

Associated Electrical Industries

In 1926 Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) was created as a holding company. They bought out both BTH and Metropolitan Vickers in 1928 and increased the size of the Rugby sites. The gas turbine story of AEI is therefore told here primarily under the names of Metrovick and BTH. In 1945, under the names Metrovick and BTH, AEI entered the field of using gas turbines for electrici ty generation. In the 1960s AEI licensed a number of companies to manufacture Marine gas turbines to their design including Harland and Wolff, Thorneycroft, White, and Yarrow in t he UK; also Franco Tosi and Reggiana in Italy, and Werkspoor in Holland. AEI were a main contractor to CEGB for the peak lopping gas turbines using aero engines as gas generators. Between 1964 and 1980 AEI installed 13 of these units totalling 445MW installed capacity for the CEGB. AEI also supplied a further 42 units totalling 1050MW to other countries. The total worldwide for this type of installation by AEI came to 55 units produced with 1450 MW capacity. AEI was bought by GEC in 1967 and in 1 968 the gas turbine business was merged into English Electric to form GEC Alsthom.

A6

Austin Motor Company

The Austin Motor Company was based i n Longbridge, United Kingdom. The team working on gas turbines was led by Dr. John Weaving and started work in 1952. They built the Austin Gas Turbine Car and a significant number of small gas turbines for auxiliary power generation and pumping duties. Work was started by Austin on the gas turbine in April 195 2 and the first unit ran in 195 4 using a RollsRoyce Merlin supercharger as a compressor. Austin went on to build the Austin 250 hp gas turbine engine and that went onto the market in 1961. After several years of turbine development a good product was being produced, it was marketed in the USA as a total energy package incorporated into t he AMF Beaird Maxim heat recovery boiler. Between 1962 and 1969 Austin manufactured over 70 gas turbines all but one being the 250hp rated machine. Most of these were sold in the UK however a few went to other countries including Algeria, Australia, Canada, Burma, Finland, Holland, Iran, Libya, Norway and the USA. A 300hp model was also introduced in 1967, however, due to the complexity of manufacture resulting in high production costs, producing these machines was not a profitable venture therefore after about nine years a decision was made to stop production. The Austin Motor Company and the Nuffield Organisation (Morris, MG, Riley and Wolseley) merged to form the British Motor Corporation (BMC) in 1952 and then in 1968 was it became part of British Leyland.

B1

Bristol Siddeley

Bristol Siddeley was formed in 1959 as the result of t he merger of Bristol Aero Engines with Armstrong Siddeley Motors. The technical office of the Bristol Siddeley Power Division Ansty set up in 1963 and headed was by Roxbee Cox. The two BS engines that have had a major impact on the industrial gas turbine field are the Proteus and the Olympus. The Proteus engine was first introduced in 1946 and it became the power plant of the Britannia aircraft. A version of the engine (3,320kW) was used in 1960-64 to power the Bluebird, Donald Campbell's land Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

- 20 -


speed record car. The bluebird had a drive shaft at each end of the engine, each connected to a separate axle. This engine was also used in 1968 on the Mountbatten class cross-channel hovercraft, which had four "Marine Proteus" engines (3,000kW) in the rear of the craft. Another use of the Proteus was for remotely operated power generation of the South West of England in what were called "Pocket Power Stations". The first two Pocket power stations were installed at Princetown, Dartmoor in December 1959 and at the Bristol Siddeley Patchway site. A further four sets were commissioned between 1960 and 1965, they were also called "The Robot Power Stations". It has been commented that the running hours for the Proteus hovercraft engines were quite signific ant, however, for the industrial units the running hours were quite modest as their duty was not as base load generators but as emergency supply/standby units. Although the fleet of engines is now considerably reduced, particularly with the closure of the Hoverspeed operation in Dover some years ago, Proteus engines still form a vital strategic role at the Nuclear power stations and will retain an operational duty to the end of this decade. BS decided to contract and build number of Olympus and Proteus powered stations in various configurations in the next few years. The Olympus engine was first introduced in 1950 and is probably most well known as the Concorde engine. This engine was installed by the Royal Navy in the Frigate HMS Exmouth in a re-fit completed in 1968. Then in 1980/ 85 they were used as the most impressive marine power plant being the engines for the HMS Invincible, HMS Illustrious and HMS Ark Royal aircraft carr iers each ship being powered by four Olympus engines. The TM3B engines used on the aircraft carriers provide 97,000shp on two shafts, this being 18,000kW each engine or 72,000kW total shaft power. At that time BS had a demonstrator Olympus generation set in one of the bays in Hams Hall "A" power station. Originally rated at 15MW it was uprated to 17.5MW in 1964. The unit was based on an aero Olympus 201 (the 202 went into the Vulcan) and had a heavy industrial style, two-stage power turbine. Between 1962 and 1969 a significant number of the Olympus engines were installed in power stations as standby generating turbine sets for use in peak lopping. Bristol Siddeley acted as main contractor on most of the Olympus plants. The sets were rated at 17.5MW as individual units or 70MW as multiple units. The power stations with Olympus engines included Croydon, Rye House, Hams Hall, Tilbury, Ferrybridge, Ratcliffe, Aberthaw, Fawley, Ironbridge, Eggborough and Townhill [20]. The first of these was at Hams Hall in 1965. In 1966 Bristol Siddeley was bought by Rolls-Royce however they have continued to develop and market Bristol-designed engines. Between 1964 and 1980 BS/ RR supplied the UK’s CEGB with 32 units totalling 875MW installed capacity.

B2

British Thomson Houston (BTH)

British Thomson Houston, from 1928 part of AEI and based in Rugby, United Kingdom played a significant role in the development of the Whittle engine. The 1937 Power Jets’ first prototype jet engine was built and tested at the BTH factory at Rugby. BTH had a major role in developing it. The first ever merchant vessel to be fitted with a gas turbine propulsion system was the Anglo Saxon Petroleum Company Tanker GTV “Auris” 12,000 tons d.w. fitted with a BTH 1200hp gas turbine generating set for electrical propulsion in 1951. In 1951 the owner replaced one of four diesel engines with a 1200hp gas turbine. The first Atlantic crossing solely under the power of a marine gas turbine was made with this British Thomson Houston gas turbine in March 1952 [10]. In 1954 BTH manufactured two of the 2,000/ 2,500kW class machines for Nairobi South Power Station in Kenya. These were single line sets with the turbine driving the compressor and the alternator, via speed Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

- 21 -


reducing gears. It had a single combustion chamber mounted vertically at the side of the set and bolted to the bottom half of the casing. In 1961 HMS Ashanti was fitted with AEI gas turbine for main propulsion. Finally BTH, as part of AEI, was bought by GEC in 1967 and in 1968 the gas turbine business was merged into English Electric to form GEC Alsthom.

B4

Brush Electrical Engineering

The Brush Electrical Company is based in Loughborough, United Kingdom. The original company was established in Lambeth, London and in 1889 the works moved from Lambeth to Loughborough. In 1970 it became part of Hawker Siddeley Power Engineering. Little information has been found about Brush gas turbines other than in 1954 they made a 20 00/ 2,500kW class gas turbine. The Brush machine was designed to run at either 3000 or 3600 rpm, being directly coupled to an alternator and was installed at Ashford Common in Middlesex. [7][14]

B5

Budworth Turbines

David Dutton Budworth was an ex Rover design engineer who established his business in Harwich, Essex in 1947 producing small aero gas turbines and in 195 2 he started building small industrial gas turbines. The Budworth 50 HP industrial gas turbine was packaged and marketed very successfully as an instructional unit. These were sold to educational establishments, universities and technical colleges worldwide. This is claimed as a great achievement for such a relatively small company. There were three different machines produced by Budworth, the Brill 50hp, the Puffin 180hp and the Blowfly 300hp. Between 1966 and 1971 there were 100 of these small gas turbines produced. Most of them were the 50hp version supplied to educational establishments around the world. David Budworth died as a result of a flying accident on Oct 25th 1974 and in 1975 the company was acquired by Noel Penny and incorporated into his small aero engine turbine business. Noel Penny was also a former designer at Rover. That company stopped trading in the late 1980s.

C1

Centrax Gas Turbines

Centrax Limited is a privately-owned company based in Newton Abbot, Devon in the South West of England, a company founded in 1946 by Richard H Barr OBE and Geoffrey R White. Towards the end of the Second World War, Richard Barr who had worked for Frank Whittle on his Power Jets team went into the design and production of a small 250 hp aero turbine as he saw the market for industrial turbines for road transport or possibly for industrial power generation. In 1947/8 he began manufacturing a 160hp industrial gas turbine designed for use in an automotive environment, potentially for road transport. The engine was exhibited as an example of the application of gas turbines to industry at the British Trade F air in London in 1948. Richard Barr turned to the area he had become very skilled at blade-making, and as a result he was able get contracts to make blades for companies such as Napier, Ruston, Allen and then later Armstrong Siddeley and others. Because of the huge demand for blades in the new industry of jet engines the business ‘took off’ and the Blades Division was created. Centrax grew from 3 people to 600 people in 4 years specifically making blades. After this early success, Centrax began manufacturing a series of gas turbines mainly for industrial roles, such as powering emergency standby generator sets. The most successful gas turbine at this time was the CS600-2, designed in the 1960s. It was a single-shaft, constant speed unit designed for operation in Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

- 22 -


arduous conditions. The Centrax industrial turbines became successful in many areas of industry including providing back-up power for many banks and other companies using the early computers of the 60s and 70s. The CS600 engine was introduced by Centrax in 1962 with a rating of 600hp (450kW). This was then uprated to 730hp (545kW) in 1962 then 914hp (680kW) in 1963 and 1,010hp (750kW) in 1964. Centrax continues to manufacture gas turbines in Newton Abbott, Devon today. The current models produced are the KB3 (2,700kW), KB5 (3,950kW) and KB7 (5,330kW) being based on the Rolls Royce 501 engine. Since 2007 they have had a licence to package the Rolls Royce Industrial Trent 60.

C2

C A Parsons & Co

The C A Parsons Company was founded by Charles Algernon Parsons in 1889 and based in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. Until it was taken over by Rolls Royce in 1989 it had been in existence for 100 years manufacturing turbines, compressors and other machinery. A new history of the Parsons gas turbine activity has been specially written for this history project by John Bolter, formerly the Chief Turbine Engineer and Engineering Director of C A Parsons in Newcastle upon Tyne. The paper of John Bolter is to be published separately. The involvement of Charles Parsons in the gas turbine story began with his patent of 1884 where he described the principles of his “multiple motor turbine”. From 1937 to 1942 the Parsons Company worked on various designs for an industrial gas turbine with a rating of 500 bhp. The results of this work were presented to the IMechE in London during February 1948 and published in June 1948. [5] The contribution of Parsons to the development of the gas turbine is summarised as follows: In 1945 the first Parson's gas turbine was completed and experiments carried out at the Heaton works of C A Parsons. The design of this machine had started in 1938. In 1948 a 15,000kW gas turbine was ordered for the British Electricity Authority (BEA) at Dunston Power Station, near Newcastle. It was commissioned in 1955. This was a three shaft machine with reheat, inter-cooling, heat exchanger, a pressure ratio of 8:1 and overall thermal efficiency of 27.66%. In 1948 a 10,000kW gas turbine was produced for the NGTE at Pyestock. This machine, which was commissioned in 1951, had inter-cooling, a pressure ratio of 5.5:1 and an overall thermal efficiency of 27.2%. In 1949 a 2,170bhp (2022kW) “Air Bleed” gas turbine was ordered for the NGTE at Pyestock. This machine was commissioned in 1956 and had a pressure ratio of 4.05:1. It did not have any heat exchangers and the output from the unit was in the form of compressed air. In 1950 a 2,500kW class gas turbine was developed as an advanced design with separate compressor and work turbines. The turbine was directly coupled to the alternator at 3000rpm with or without a heat exchanger. One machine was installed in Heaton works in 1954 and a second produced for Singapore and installed at the Pasir Panjang power station. In 1952 at the request of the UK Government Parsons also developed a coal fired gas turbine locomotive in conjunction with the North British Locomotive Company. This unit had a rating of 1800hp [37]. In 1954 the first use of a gas turbine in an armoured fighting vehicle was when a unit specifically developed for tanks by Parsons was installed and trialled in a British Conqueror tank By 1959 the company decided not to continue with the small gas turbine market. They did prepare designs for a 30,000kW unit with a nine stage compressor and a three stage turbine. This gas turbine did not materialise.


- 23 -


In 1977 C A Parsons became part of Northern Engineering Industries (NEI) and in 1989 part of RollsRoyce. Then in 1997 the power generation division of Siemens acquired the business. Siemens continues manufacture of generator spindles at the much-reduced 'Parsons Works' in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, although the Parsons name itself is no longer used as a trade name.

E2

English Electric Company

The English Electric Company was formed in 1918 and it took over the company Willans and Robinson of Rugby and the Willans Works. The company gas turbine activities were based initially based at the Willans Works in Rugby and later moved to Whetstone, Leicestershire, United Kingdom. In 1951 English Electric was already devoting considerable effort into the production of gas turbines with a range f rom 2,000kW to 20,000kW being manufactured at the Rugby works. In 1954 a 2,000/ 2,500kW class gas turbine with axial / centrifugal compressor was developed. The first of these went to Ashford Common. A 20,000kW unit was designed for central power station use and differed from other machines at the time by having no heat exchanger and the thermal efficiency improved by using a higher pressure ratio. [13] Between 1956 and 1964 there were 26 industrial (heavy duty) gas turbines manufactured by English Electric. A number went to Iraq for oil pumping duty. In 1960 one 2,750hp (2,000kW) unit was used in an EE locomotive. The two largest industrial gas turbine operating in the UK at that time were the 20,000kW machines for RAE Bedford installed in 1955. These were of the twin shaft type with heat exchangers and installed for power generation to drive the blowers at the RAE Bedford aircraft research facility. Refer to Chapter 10.

E3

English Electric Gas Turbine Department Whetstone

In 1955 the English Electric part of the gas turbine story moved from Rugby to Whetstone about 20 miles north. The Whetstone gas turbine facility had been established in 1942 by Power jets as a jet engine factory and was the site where most of the Whittle engine testing was carried out. This site also became a research centre for the gas turbine division of GEC. We are especially privileged to have a first hand account of the work done at Whetstone from Steve Reed, who was employed at Lincoln and Whetstone, and has contributed to much of this history. Included in the achievements of English Electric were: 1960 First gas turbine generating station in Indonesia (3 x 2,000kW) Shell Indonesia 1961 First gas turbine generating station in India (3 x 2,000kW) Oil-India Private-Ltd 1964 First large gas turbine set employing multiple aero gas generators enters service at Earley, Reading England a 56,000kW unit with two twin jet power turbines to drive a single generator 1967 First gas turbine generating station in South Africa (2 x 22,200kW) City of Johannesburg EE/ GEC were a main contractor to the CEGB for the peak lopping gas turbines using Avon aero engines as gas generators. Between 1964 and 1980 the UK’s CEGB installed 63 of the EE/ GEC units totalling 2260MW installed capacity. EE/ GEC supplied a further 21 units totalling 405MW to other countries. The total worldwide for this type of installation by EE/ GEC came to 84 units produced with 2665 MW capacity. The record of gas turbines produced in Rugby and Whetstone by English Electric and subsequently GEC/ Alsthom shows that in total some 595 machines were produced for UK and overseas installation including power generation, mechanical drive and off-shore applications. In 2003, at the time of the sale of the Alstom small gas turbine business, this was designated as the Alstom Power Technology Centre with manufacturing being carried out in Lincoln. Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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E2

General Electric Company (GEC) UK

The Fraser and Chalmers Company had been started in the USA by two young men from Scotland who formed a company in London around 1890 at Erith, Kent. The British company expanded into steam plant, milling machinery and general engineering. Fraser and Chalmers factory was bought by the General Electric Company (GEC). An earlier link to Alsthom has been discovered being a licence agreement between Fraser and Chalmers and Rateau. In 1965 GEC sold out their turbo generator business to C A Parsons as part of a rationalisation in the turbine industry required by CEGB. In 1967 GEC acquired AEI then after acquiring AEI, in 1968 GEC itself was merged with English Electric and the gas turbine business, based at W hetstone, Leicester became known as GEC Gas Turbines Limited.

J1

John Brown & Co/ John Brown Engineering

The John Brown Company (JBE) was based in Clydebank, Scotland. In 1948 John Brown entered the field of gas turbines with an experimental machine based on a Pametrada design. At the same time they had entered into a licence agreement with Esher-Wyss of Switzerland allowing them to market and to produce the Esher-Wyss closed cycle design gas turbine. This relationship lasted until 1962 when they temporarily abandoned gas turbine manufacture. The initial phase of John Brown’s gas turbine business was most interesting as they built closed cycle gas turbines to run on Peat. This work on closed cycle systems is closely linked to that of Escher Wyss of Switzerland. This work was carried out for NOSHEB and the Scottish Peat committee throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s. There was also a 12 ,500kW closed cycle machine installed in the Carolina Port power station in Dundee and a 7,000kW closed cycle machine installed in the Foleshill Coventry gas works. There was a pause in the manufacture of gas turbines on Clydebank as in 1962, due to the difficulties experienced in Scotland, the manufacture of gas turbines stopped. In 1965 JBE resumed gas turbine manufacture under a new licence arrangement with GE, USA. The GE manufacturing licence resulted in some 552 GE machines being produced by John Brown in Clydebank until it came to an end in 1999 when GE bought back the gas turbine business. Initially the agreement with GE was for John Brown Engineering to manufacture Frame 3 and Frame 5 gas turbines for a period of 7 years. This was later extended by 10 years and finally lasted 34 years. This arrangement allowed JBE to manufacture GE turbines for both exportation to the USA (called re-imports) and to other markets. The first GE machines left Clydebank in 1967 and between 1967 and 1999 JBE supplied 90 -MS3002, 2 MS5001 and 45 - MS5002 gas turbines for mechanical drive applications. In the same period the company manufactured 4 - MS3002, 265 - MS5001, 1 - MS5002, 92 - MS600 1, 4 - MS7001, and 49 MS9001 gas turbines for power generation. In total 552 GE gas turbines were manufactured at Clydebank. In 1999 the gas turbine business of John Brown Engineering was sold to GE and manufacturing of turbines on Clydebank ceased after 51 years.

L1

Joseph Lucas (Gas Turbine Equipment)

The Joseph Lucas Company, in addition to their aero engine work, has had quite an involvement in the development of the industrial gas turbine starting from 1940. A company named Joseph Lucas (Gas turbine Equipment) designed combustion chambers for gas turbines. In the 1948 paper of C A Parsons [5] it is mentioned that a Lucas combustion chamber had been included in the trials. Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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L2

British Leyland Gas turbines

In 1968 the Leyland Motor Company absorbed both Austin and Rover gas turbines to form the B ritish Leyland Gas Turbine Company. The leading design engineer was Noel Penny, formerly at Rover. Leyland continued production of the Austin 250hp engine until 1969. The Rover design was much more successful and the manufacture of the Rover designed gas turbines continued until 1973. British Leyland introduced their gas turbine powered truck at Earls Court in 1968 this had a 350/ 400hp engine. This was followed by the gas turbine for the British Rail high speed train (APT-E) which went on trial in 1972. In 1973 British Leyland stopped the production of gas turbines mainly because diesel engines were coming on stream producing more power by the adoption of turbo charging, and were also more economical. After this Noel Penny decided to establish his own company and this would have been around 1973-74.

M1

Metropolitan Vickers (Metrovick)

Metropolitan Vickers, part of AEI was based at Trafford Park in Manchester, United Kingdom. This was known as the Barton Dock Road site. Metrovick started work on gas turbines around 1947 and one of the gas turbine team in Trafford Park was Frank Harris. We are especially privileged to have a first hand account of the work done in those early days from Trevor Wick who was also employed in the gas turbine department. The first British axial-flow jet engine was the Metrovick F2 known as the Beryl engine. This engine was followed by the Sapphire design. MV was eventually persuaded to hand over the Beryl/Sapphire design to Armstrong Siddeley. In 1947 a Metrovick gas turbine installation in the MGB2009 became the world’s first ever gas turbine propelled ship. The world’s first gas turbine ship was powered by a Metropolitan Vickers engine. This Royal Navy vessel went to sea in July 1947 and was designated Motor Gun Boat 2009. The turbine, rated at 2500hp, was named the “Gatric”. [7] A Metrovic gas turbine of 1948 was the first ever generating set to run in parallel with the British National Grid System. This was a Turbo Jet engine driving a power turbine for a 2,000kW generating set and known as the E.G.T.P. In 1952 Metrovick supplied a 15,000kW gas turbine, which was installed in Trafford power station becoming the first to enter service for the BEA. This being one of two similar gas turbines ordered at the time, the other being from C A Parsons. This unit differed as it was a two shaft arrangement; one driving the HP compressor and the other the LP compressor and the alternator, the HP shaft ran at a higher speed. In 1952 Metrovick developed a 3000 hp version of their gas turbine for locomotive traction and this was put into service by British Railways in April 1952 using fuel oil. This unit, intended for overseas railways, had considerably more power than developed by current locomotives in use in the UK at the time. In 1954 a 2,000/ 2,500kW class gas turbine was developed and the first one was installed at the Metropolitan Water Board Ashford Common pumping station. Another machine, slightly lower output, was procured by a British Oil Company and sent to Venezuela. This Metrovick gas turbine department worked independently until 1958 when they were amalgamated with the BTH team in Rugby as AEI eventually becoming part of GEC Gas Turbines.


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P1

Power Jets

The Power Jets Company was formed in 1936 by Frank Whittle. The company was incorporated and Whittle received permission from the Air Ministry to serve as honorary chief engineer and technical consultant for five years. Whittle then went to BTH at Rugby and contracted them to build a "WU" (Whittle Unit), his first experimental jet engine. The WU engine was built in Rugby and fired for the first time on 12 April 1937 at the nearby Power Jets facility in Lutterworth, Leicestershire. They then moved to a new site at Whetstone. In 1944 Power Jets was nationalised and after that they became a government owned consulting group.

R2

Rolls-Royce

From the 1940s until the 1960s R-R and its original absorbed companies did not get into industrial power generation. It was left to English Electric, Ruston and AEI to develop industrial machines as it was not R-R area of expertise. In 1953 Rolls Royce developed the RM60 gas turbine for the marine application with an output of 6000 hp. The machine was a lightweight compound unit built from aero engine technology. The RM60 was for the Royal Navy HMS Grey Goose, which had 2 x RM60 engines [13]. No more were built. RR consists of a number aero engine companies that, as a result of political motivation were absorbed into BS and RR in 1960. Then in 1966 RR absorbed BS. RR however had an entirely different approach to industrial gas turbines. They sold only gas generators to main contractors such as AEI, English Electric, GEC and Stal Laval. When RR took over BS, Ansty became the Industrial and Marine Division and main contracting was dropped except for marine work for the MoD. Rolls Royce had become involved in rail propulsion on at least two occasions, one with the M45 (a joint RR/SNECMA engine) at the time of the TGV. The other occasion was when BR had problems with the Rover engines in their high speed train. These two ventures were not pursued. RR industrialised the largest version of the Avon, the Mk 533, to become the Industrial Avon Mk 1533. The first unit was installed in 1964 into gas pipeline duty by TransCanada at their Caron Station, producing around 10 MW. Most of the power generation Avon’s were sold to the CEGB through the previous mentioned main contract companies when it decided to overcome the grid weakness exposed by the east Kent blackout in the early 1960s. There were many of these sold outside of UK by GEC. During the following 40 years or so the Avon has been uprated several times, but mostly for the oil and gas industry rather than power generation. The CEGB Avon’s were all Mk 1533B and matched to an equivalent final nozzle diameter of 24.5 inches. Sales to CEGB ran from 1963 to 1967. The RR 501 industrial gas turbine has a rating of 5,000kW. The RB211 engine was originally developed for the TriStar and entered service in 1972. It is a three shaft design. During 1974 the industrial version of the RB211 was launched but with the oil & gas industry in mind. These units have also been used for power generation and are rated 25,000 to 44,000kW. The RB211 is still being uprated and new models are being marketed. The Trent 800 is a three shaft engine that first went into service in the Boeing 777 a nd first ran in August 1990. The Industrial Trent Gas Turbine is a derivative of this engine and is designed for power generation and mechanical drive. It delivers up to 64,000kW of electricity at 42% efficiency. The Marine Trent is a derivative of the Trent 800, with gearbox, that produces 36,000kW for maritime applications. It will power the Royal Navy's next generation of aircraft carriers. Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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The WR-21 is a development introduced in the 1990s. This is an Intercooled Recuperated (ICR) gas turbine rated at 21MW for marine propulsion and powers the Royal Navy Type 45 ships. Rolls Royce has supplied some 5200 industrial gas turbines worldwide. The Rolls Royce Heritage Trust and a number of former Rolls-Royce engineers have all kindly provided information and technical papers as their contribution to this history and that is most appreciated.

R3

Rover Company

Rover was based in Solihull, West Midlands, United Kingdom; being a British motor car manufacturing company founded in 1878. The Rover Company did not, as many may assume, only make gas turbines for automobiles but they also manufactured industrial gas turbines too. The Rover gas-turbines were manufactured for a variety of stationary applications for emergency pumps and marine use as a gasturbine is light and can be run quickly up to power. The Whittle "W2B" aero engine was designed by Power Jets, and a complete set of drawings passed to the several firms. The first and second W2Bs to be tested by Power Jets were actually manufactured by the Rover Company at the Rover gas turbine plant at Barnoldswick in Lancashire in 1942. Rover was involved in design changes to that engine however in early 1943 the W2 was transferred to Ro lls-Royce. Rover became famous for its Rover gas turbine car of the 1950s. In 1950 the Rover designer F. R. Bell and Chief Engineer Maurice Wilks unveiled the first car powered with a gas turbine engine. [74] The first prototype Rover gas turbine engine was running by February 1947. The Rover gas turbine car JET1 with 100bhp was demonstrated to the public in March 1950 achieving a speed of 85 mph. The updated version with an engine of 230 bhp went on to achieve a speed of 1 52 mph. The gas turbine for JET1 consisted of a single stage centrifugal compressor with a maximum speed of 52,000 rpm, driven by a single stage axial turbine re-designed so that it took only suffic ient power from the gas stream to drive the compressor and fuel and oil pumps. A second single stage power turbine was added to take the remaining power from the gas stream to drive front and rear differential units. They also had a model IS60 educational set, which sold worldwide to all major Universities Institutes and Colleges thus having a great influence on future Gas Turbine use and applications. In November 1950 a former RAF 60ft sea rescue launch “Torquil” was modified to be driven by two Rover gas turbines. In 1954 Rover made a unit of 60hp rating designated “Neptune”. Rover also had marine gas turbines with their 120hp “Aurora” and 300hp “Snowdon” models. *13] Between 1954 and 1973 a total of 1052 Rover gas turbines were produced, 777 of these being the 60hp rated units. Over 200 units were used for water pumping applications, 474 for auxiliary power generation and over 250 were educational units for colleges and universities. It is interesting to note that the Royal Air Force purchased 199 Rover auxiliary generators. In 1968 Rover became part of British Leyland combining Austin turbines and Rover turbines into Leyland Gas Turbines. They continued production of gas turbines at Solihull for road vehicles, power generation, pumps and rail traction. The production of Rover gas turbines stopped in 1973.

R4

Ruston & Hornsby

The Ruston and Hornsby Company based in Lincoln, United Kingdom was established in 1918 although with origins in a much earlier company. From the time it was established, Ruston has always been Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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involved in the design and manufacture of power units; steam, gas, and diesel, and since 1946, the gas turbine and so Ruston Gas Turbines. In 1946 following on from the work of Frank Whittle on jet engines and gas turbines, Ruston set up a small specialist team, known as the Internal Combustion Development Group, to investigate the feasibility of designing a gas turbine. It was shortly after Power Jets completed their work that G.B. R. “Bob” Feilden was invited to take charge of Ruston work in the gas turbine field. A team of young enthusiastic engineers was then created to design the first Ruston industrial gas turbine. It is recorded that it was no exaggeration to say that every single component of the original 3CT engine and the subsequent TA turbine was stressed out individually. Subsequently the output of the TA engine has been increased by some 50% mainly by using materials and technology more recently available. This same approach to design has been adopted by those who have been involved in the development of the more recent engines. They have, of course, taken advantage of the advance in metallurgy and technology and have had the help of computers to speed their calculations. It is believed that between 1954 and 1980 over 900 of these Ruston gas turbines were produced. This sums up as almost 2,000,000 bhp or 1,450MW of capacity. The totals for each of the Ruston models up to the year 1980 were TA 563, TB 231, TD 36, TE 65 and TF 12. Ruston 3CT Engine This machine had initial trials in 1949. The 3CT was a prototype two shaft open cycle engine. In 1950 the engine was demonstrated to engineers of the leading British and overseas technical press. Ruston TA Engine The Ruston TA was first introduced in 1954 with a rating of 1,260bhp. Before design work was done on the prototype turbine itself, considerable development was carried out on the combustion chamber design. The fuels tested included gas oil, residual fuels, creosote (CTF 50), creosote pitch (CTF 200), washed sewage gas, peat and water gas tar produced from town gas. Full scale production of the TA engine started in 1952 and i n that same year the first order was received for an oil field application for an oil company in the Middle East. Long before the common concept of “total energy” was thought of, Ruston was installing TA gas turbines with exhaust heat recovery systems. The first TA turbine to be put to work in the USA on this basis was at the Park Plaza shopping centre in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1956. Ruston TD Engine In 1967 the design of a 3MW single shaft engine known as the TD4000 (4,000bhp), was begun. It was introduced in 1970 with a rating of 3870 bhp. During its design, the concept of similarity envisaged at the time the decision to build the larger development vehicle was taken, was departed from to achieve a reduction in bulk particularly to the combustion chamber layout and to achieve a reduction in cost, which applied largely to the compressor. An arrangement using four combustion chambers angled back over the compressor casing was selected for the TD4000 engine, which achieved a useful reduction in the overall size of the engine. The approach to the design of the compressor was to achieve a reduction in production costs by reducing the number of profiles from 14 to 4 thus a substantial reduction in blade (bucket) costs was achieved with virtually no loss in aerodynamic efficiency. Ruston TB Engine The TB was first introduced in 1969 with a rating of 3000 bhp. Although the technology used for the TB was closely similar to the earlier engines provision was made in the basic design to Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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incorporated new materials and technology at a later stage and it was further developed, from its original rating of 3000bhp, in a number of steps (i.e. 4000 bhp, 4900bhp, 5200bhp and finally 5400bhp) to its final rating of 5400bhp in the 1990's and ceased production for new unit sales in the early 2000's. These increases resulting from improved metallurgy, higher firing temperatures, air cooled blading etc. many improvements being reverse engineered into the product based on technology advances used in the Tornado (SGT200) etc Ruston TE Engine The TE was first introduced in 1960 with a rating of 430bhp. Ruston TF Engine The TF was first introduced in 1962 with a rating of 1960bhp. Today Siemens still support all of the Ruston models identified above and in 2010 even built an entirely 'new' TB5000 gas generator (for an existing User) from 100% new parts.

6.

The European Companies

The 1951 book “The Industrial Gas Turbine” by Dr E.C. Ro berson lists twelve European manufacturers as being already active in industrial gas turbine manufacture. [6] The European companies were in many ways the leaders in the field. Those active during the period 1940-1990 included:

A4

Alsthom/ Alstom

Alsthom commenced experimental work with free piston engines as early as 1940. It is reported [6] that in 1951 they had a 5,000kW open cycle gas turbine under construction. This work was based at their factory in Belfort. In 1968 Alsthom merged with GEC of the United Kingdom to form GEC Alsthom. This included the gas turbine businesses of Ruston, English Electric, AEI, BTH and Metrovick. The change of name from Alsthom to Alstom took place in 1998. From around 1965 until 1999 Alsthom were a manufacturing associate of GE (General Electric USA). GE had Manufacturing Associate agreements with a number of international suppliers. Under these agreements, the international supplier purchased the rotor and hot gas path parts from GE, USA. The international supplier then built the rest of the machine, and it was sold as a GE designed gas turbine. Alsthom was one of these international suppliers. The Frame 9 machine was special as it was developed in Belfort, France and first manufactured in B elfort and the first unit installed in Paris during 1977. In 1999 Alstom acquired the gas turbine business of ABB, w hich included the entire ABB range of gas turbines. That same year GE purchased back the GE manufacturing facilities of Alstom thus separating the Alstom ABB gas turbines from the GE business. In 2004, Alstom sold their small industrial gas turbine businesses; (3-15MW) mainly in the UK and the medium sized GT business (15 - 50 MW) mainly in Sweden, to Siemens leaving Alstom with a reduced range of gas turbines. These are the GT24, GT26, GT13E2 and the GT11N, all originally ABB designed.


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B3

Brown Boveri & Co

The Brown Boveri Company (BBC) was originally based in Baden, Switzerland and founded in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri. An additional manufacturing facility was built in Birr in the late 1950s. In the first decades of its history BBC was the world leader in the industrial gas turbine field and made some really outstanding achievements including:1939 1941 1946 1966

First commercial gas turbine for power production rated at 4,000kW for Neuchatel First gas turbine locomotive 2,200hp for the Swiss Federal Railways First large gas turbine plant 27,000kW unit 55,000kW gas turbine is tested in Mannheim

The first BBC gas turbine to enter service was in 1933, this was the Holzwarth (explosion concept) fired on blast furnace gas fuel at a German Steel Plant [52]. Hans Holzwarth of Germany had began a series of experiments in 1905, his design depending on an explosion of the fuel air mixture in o rder to generate sufficient pressure rise to derive useful work from the turbine. Air at a very low pressure of some 30 to 40psig (2-2.7barg) was used to scavenge the turbine combustor in which fuel was subsequently sprayed and allowed to burn raising the pressure to some 170 to 200psig (11.7-13.8barg). This elevated pressure opened a valve that allowed the high pressure and hot gas to expand through the turbine. Turbines based on this principle had outputs up to 20 megawatts. It is recorded that the efficiencies of compressors and turbines at that time were too low for practical application [52]. In 1936 the Sun Oil Company of Philadelphia was developing the Houdry Cracking process for oil refineries and asked Brown Boveri and Company to adapt their axial flow compressor from the Velox boiler to this process. During the shop testing it was necessary for Brown Boveri to provide a combustion chamber in order to simulate the heat of the carbon burning process within the Houdry process. This was an expansion turbine and with this set up in their own shops, Brown Boveri realised that the compressor, combustor, and turbine provided for a workable gas turbine, which could be turned to power production. This was the event that led Brown Boveri to produce a gas turbine that was installed at Neuchatel in Switzerland for stand by service in 1939. The Neuchatel gas turbine had an output of 4,000kW with a turbine inlet temperature of approximately 1020°F (550°C) and an efficiency of 17.4 percent. Professor Aurel Stodola supervised the acceptance tests. In 1939 the Swiss Federal Railways ordered a GTEL gas turbine electric locomotive with a rating of 1,620kW (2,170 hp) from Brown Boveri. The BBC gas turbine locomotive was completed in 1941 when it underwent testing before entering regular service. In 1949 the Brown Boveri completed the BR 18000, an 1,840kW (2,470hp) GTEL that had been ordered by the Great Western Railway for express passenger services in the UK. In the space of forty years from 1940 to 1980 Brown Boveri and associates produced over 400 gas turbines, 310 being for power generation, 17 compressor drives, 17 marine and 52 process applications. In 1946 a 27,000kW turbine was supplied to the North Eastern Power Supply Co in Switzerland. By 1966 a 55,000kW machine was under test at Brown Boveri works in Mannheim, Germany. In 1975 the largest unit rating had reached 118,000kW. Boveri Sulzer Turbomachinery Co (BST) was a temporary joint venture created between Brown Boveri and Sulzer for the manufacture of turbo machinery during the 1960s and 1970s. This ended when the two parent companies separated the joint venture, leaving Sulzer retaining the capacity to manufacture the smaller turbines. In 1988 the Neuchatel gas turbine was recognised by ASME as a historic mechanical engineering landmark. The Neuchatel Gas Turbine was taken out of service only in 2002 (after 60 years service) and it has since been preserved and re-located to a permanent museum at the Brown Boveri (now Alstom) gas Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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turbine development facility in Birr, Switzerland. The Neuchatel unit has been carefully rebuilt and is now displayed in a specially built house. On the merger with ASEA the company changed its name to ABB in 1988. In 1999 the ABB turbine business was taken over by Alstom Power.

E4

Escher Wyss

Escher Wyss AG (EW) based in Zurich, Switzerland, was an industrial company with a focus on engineering and turbine construction. The company's headquarters were in Zurich until 1969 when it was taken over by Sulzer AG. This company pioneered the development of the closed air cycle gas turbine, which is attributed to Prof. Dr. Ackeret of ETH Institute, Zurich and Prof. Dr. Keller of Escher Wyss, Zurich [58]. The basic patent was registered in Berne in July 1935. In 1939 when BBC in Baden was installing the first open cycle gas turbine Escher Wyss in Zurich was putting a closed air cycle gas turbine i nto operation. The manufacturing licences and collaborators of Escher Wyss included: John Brown Engineering, GHH Germany, Fuji Electric and La Fleur Corporation all of whom constructed a number of closed cycle gas turbines. The closed cycle plants were used mainly in combined power and heating plants. Escher Wyss aimed to have a cycle operating as close as possible to the Carnot Cycle having two intercoolers with the compressor and recuperation of the turbine waste heat used to preheat the air to the compressor. The simple cycle of that time achieved 17% efficiency with a turbine inlet temperature at 540 °C whilst the closed cycle with 700 °C achieved an efficiency of 31.6%. The Escher Wyss plant could be operated at a constant 650 °C. The work of Escher Wyss on the closed cycle is described in a paper published in 1967 [16]. In that paper they report on progress with seven closed cycle plants. The seven were Ravensburg Germany (2,300kW), Toyatomi Japan (2,000kW), Coburg Germany (6,600kW), Kashira Russia (12,000kW), Nippon Kokan Japan (12,000kW), Oberhaussen Germany (14,300kW) and Haus Aden Germany (6,370kW). At that time the earliest CC gas turbine had run for 60,000h and the more recent 30,000h. They were being fi red on coal, natural gas, blast furnace gas and mine gas. The turbine inlet temperatures on these plants were between 660 and 720 °C. In 1966 the first ever closed cycle helium gas turbine was produced. In total 24 Escher Wyss closed cycle plants were built by EW and its the associated companies. According to one source most of these operated successfully. This technology was transferred to Sulzer in 1969, and then to Brown Boveri. The name changed to ABB in 1988 and in 1999 to Alstom Power. The transfer of the technology resulted in closed cycle gas turbines taking a back seat as the successor companies had different ideas as to the future of the gas turbine. There was no new activity after 1981.

K1

Kongsberg

Kongsberg manufacture the KG2 range (1,900kW) and the KG5 (3,110kW) all radial gas turbine first introduced in 1968. The Beginning Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk AS (KV), founded in 1814, was originally a small arms manufacturer wholly owned by the Norwegian Government.


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In the spring of 1964 work on the design of a small industrial gas turbine, the KG2, commenced. The basic reason for selecting the gas turbine option was that it represented an advanced mechanical product with a market growth potential. Another factor was that KV had contacts with Boeing and P&W. The market assessment called for a small industrial machine and the design philosophy was aiming at a robust and simple design. A centrifugal compressor was selected, but it took longer to decide upon combining it with a radial inflow turbine. The contacts with P&W and their consultant on radial turbines played a significant role in the decision. P&W also assisted in the development of the combustor, but the concept and the layout work was performed by a team of KV engineers. In a little over 3 years, two prototypes were designed, manufactured and initially tested in Kongsberg. Sales & Applications In 1968 the first KG2, rated at 1,200kW, had a simple cycle thermal efficiency of 15.4 %, and was delivered to the Norwegian Water & Electricity Board. This was used as a stand-by/emergency power generation set on the island of Røst in Lofoten Norway. When the first oil was found by Phillips Petroleum in the Ekofisk field, a new market opened up. A number of KG2 units were sold and installed on the new oil platforms, both for continuous and stand-by power generation. The references and experience gained in the North Sea led to sales to other oil companies around the world. Indonesia, the Middle East, Dubai and Abu Dhabi were amongst the first to recognise the newcomer in the market. In parallel sales efforts directed at the stand-by m arket in Europe continued. Although the KG2 was a simple design it had about the same fuel consumption as the competitors in the same power range and managed well in the competition. The application engineers were quite i nventive and enthusiastic and came up with a number of new solutions. The mobile unit was a complete power station in a trailer, including control room. In the marine market the TurboSafe and Turb-Inert systems were installed in many super-tankers, mostly Norwegian, but also the Maersk line and the major oil companies were among the customers. TURBOSAFE was a stand-by/emergency generating set, which could be mounted outside the engine room due to its low weight. The Turb-Inert system used an afterburner in the exhaust to burn out the remaining oxygen such that the empty tanks could be filled with an inert gas. Compressor bleed through an ejector was used to remove the inert gas when it was necessary to enter for cleaning etc. A direct driven sea water pump set was also developed and installed on supply ships for fire fighting purposes. In the first 8 years around 500 engines were sold and in total, including license manufacturing and spares a total of around 1000 units have been built. Technical The “All radial” configuration is unique to the KG2. The rotor consist s of a single stage centrifugal compressor mounted back to back with a single stage radial inflow turbine. The overhung rotor is supported by hydrodynamic bearings at the cold end. Both radial bearings and also the thrust bearing are of the tilting pad type. The manufacturing technology in the 1960s was such that both the compressor and the turbine stage had to be split in 2 pieces. The compressor had an investment cast inducer section and a forged and machined impeller section with straight radial blades. Both were made from a precipitation hardening stainless steel. Likewise the turbine consisted of a forged and machined impeller section and an investment cast Exducer section. The Exducer is made from Inconel 713LC and the turbine from Nimonic 90. The compressor diffuser has 3 stages of precision cast vanes mounted between the side walls.


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The combustor is of the reverse flow can type with a centre tube to achieve even temperature distribution. The fuel nozzles could be pure liquid or gas, but a dual fuel version was early introduced. The combustor is tangentially mounted to the centreline and hot gases from the combustor are directed into the nozzle guide vanes via a scroll or volute. The nozzle guide vanes are made from a precision cast cobalt alloy and are un-cooled. A special feature with the radial inflow turbine compared with an axial multi -stage turbine is that for a given turbine inlet temperature (TIT), and effi ciency, it will have a lower average metal temperature. This is utilised by running the radial turbine with a higher TIT for the same metal temperature. A temperature difference in the order of 120 to 130°C is typical. Also the metal temperature will be the highest at the inlet tip where the stresses are zero and as the temperature decreases inward f rom the tip, the (centrifugal), stress increases. This is utilised to design a rotor blade with a “constant” creep life. It requires a material with an optimal combination of creep and tensile strength. Initially the turbine impeller was made from Nimonic 90, but in the first upgrade in 1972 the material was changed to Waspaloy and this has been kept since. The new cycle parameters involved increasing the nominal speed to 18000 rpm thereby increasing the mass flow to 12.5 kg/s and the pressure ratio to 3.9. The TIT could also be raised due to the new impeller material, giving a nominal rating of 1,530kW at base load. The last upgrade of the KG2 was done in 1987 when a new compressor stage was introduced. It was a modern, backward curved compressor made from a single piece Titanium forging. It raised the PR to 4.5 and the mass flow to 15 kg/s, thus increasing the power to 1,930kW. Since 1987 Kongsberg have been part of Dresser-Rand and it continues to develop, market and manufacture Kongsberg designed gas turbines.

S1

Siemens

The Siemens Company resumed gas turbine activities in Mülheim/ Ruhr, Germany in 1948. The project was described as “P1” and initially was exclusively theoretical activities, which yielded the statement that an open-cycle gas turbine for commercial power plant operation should be designed for turbine inlet temperatures of 620 to 640°C and a pressure ratio 4.0:1. Compressor efficiency was then estimated as 86% and turbine efficiency as 89%. Based on this data, the overall efficiency of such an open cycle gas turbine was estimated to be 17.6% in base load operation. At a pressure ratio of 12.5:1 the efficiency was estimated to be 24.3%, however such a compressor was too expensive. Based on the calculations performed by Friedrich, two concepts for heavy-duty gas turbines were proposed to the board members of Siemens-Schuckert Werke at the end of 1948. These were the open-cycle gas turbine in the size of 2 to 30 MW and the closed-cycle gas turbine—based on the Ackeret-Keller-Process—in the output range of 30 to 100 MW. It was then decided to proceed with further development activities. One of the first projects designed was a 40 MW multi-shaft gas turbine configuration with dual i nter-cooling for the compressors; recuperator and dual reheat of exhaust gas. Based on a turbine inlet temperature of 640°C and a pressure ratio of 9.0:1 the estimated efficiency was 34%. In parallel Friedrich began design work on an experimental axial-flow gas turbine compressor. [38] VM 1 Gas Turbine 1956. The first Siemens gas turbine was named VM 1 and designed for an output of 1.5 MW at the turbine coupling. Design work began on this turbine in 1954 concurrent with the compressor and combustion chamber test runs. It was decided to build a turbine for driving a compressor only and to use a nozzle to simulate the influence of the turbine for driving a generator. The 3-stage compressor turbine Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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itself was designed for a 620°C turbine inlet temperature. In 1956, all components were assembled and the first Siemens gas turbine made its first test run. In March 1957 this first gas turbine was shut down to continue the test series with three other units, however, the design work for the planned VM 2 unit was stopped due to two other gas turbine projects. [38] VM 3 Gas Turbine with Recuperator 1957. While the first VM 1 test machine was still being manufactured in 1952, the possibility of using an additional 2,800kWel machine to supply electric power to the Siemens-Schuckert Werke plant in Nuremberg was considered. This gas turbine was to be very similar to the VM1 but equipped with a recuperator for the purpose of improving thermodynamic efficiency. Ultimately this gas turbine was set up in the testing lab at the Mülheim turbine plant. Despite its modest turbine inlet temperature of only 650°C (necessitated by its uncooled blading) it achieved an efficiency of 26 %. Long-term tests were performed with this machine, including operation on fuel oil and to a lesser extent heavy fuel oil, until it was finally removed from service in 1968 after ten years of operation. [38] VM 5 - First Commercial Gas Turbine 1958. During 1956, Siemens began planning work on the construction of a 5,600kW gas turbine for commercial operation on blast-furnace gas. Construction of the compressor had already begun when a contract was signed in 1958 by the Siemens-Schuckert Werke and the smelting plant operated by Dortmund-Hörder-Hütten-Union for the supply of this gas turbine to drive a blast furnace blower. The VM 5 gas turbine used to drive a blast furnace blower lives on as according to a statement by ThyssenKrupp, this machine was operated from 1960 until March 1998. Thereafter the gas turbine and the blast furnace, along with the entire steel works, was dismantled and shipped to China. The steelworks is currently being installed at the Handan Iron & Steel plant (located some 200 km south of Beijing). [38] Series VM 80 and VM 51 In 1959 once it had been demonstrated that the Siemens-Schuckert Werke could build functional gas turbines, the question arose as to how one could establish a position on the market. Developing what was then the world’s largest single-shaft gas turbine and thus occupying a market segment with no competitors was the strategy to be followed. To achieve this objective, the proven VM 3 mechanical design was used as the basis for developing a larger machine within the prevailing technical limits. This initially involved adherence to a two-casing design, however with dimensions increased as far as possible. A gas turbine was produced that had a compressor mass flow of 184 kg/s, a pressure ratio of 6.0:1, a turbine inlet temperature of 720°C, and uncooled turbine blading. In terms of performance, this machine produced an electric output of 23.4 MWel at an effici ency of 32%, measured at the generator terminals. In 1959 the first order for the construction of such a gas turbine, known as the VM 80, was placed by the Munich utility Stadtwerke München where it began commercial operation in September 1961. A second VM 80 was added in 1964. Three additional gas turbine plants of this design were ordered for power plants. Until 1996, the last of the two machines at the München-Sendling CHP plant had logged about 2,700 starts and 165,000 calendar operating hours. [38] In 1961 the transition was made to the key design features, which have been retained until the present by Siemens gas turbines: a common rotor shared by the compressor and turbine, supported in two bearings and a single casing. These developments included: 1970 V93 51 MW 1970 V94 86 MW 1977 V93.2 73 MW 1985 V94.2 148 MW 1994 V94.3 213 MW 1996 V94.3A 232 MW Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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The last two mentioned gas turbine developments were both installed at Didcot Power Station in the UK. These have been followed by a continuous programme of development. The Westinghouse gas turbine business was sold to Siemens in 1998 to become Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation. New Nomenclature In 2004 the gas turbine programmes of the merged companies of Siemens including Ruston, Stal-Laval and Westinghouse have been joined under a uniform nomenclature. This nomenclature has removed many of the well known gas turbine names renaming these under a common identification using the “SGT” series *47]. Siemens 50 Cycle Machines (2004) Previous Name

New Name

Previous Name

New Name

Previous Name

New Name

Typhoon Tornado Tempest Cyclone

SGT-100 SGT-200 SGT-300 SGT-400

GT35 GT10B GT10C GTX100 W251

SGT-500 SGT-600 SGT-700 SGT-800 SGT-900

V64.3 V94.2 V94.2A V94.3A

SGT-1000F SGT5-2000E SGT5-3000E SGT5-4000F

Table 2 Siemens new Nomenclature

S4

Sulzer / Brown Boveri Sulzer (BST)

Boveri Sulzer Turbomachinery Co. (BST) was a temporary joint venture created between Brown Boveri and Sulzer for the manufacture of turbo machinery during the 1960s and 1970s. This ended when the two parent companies separated the joint venture, leaving Sulzer retaining the capacity to manufacture the smaller turbines.

7.

American Industrial Gas Turbine Companies

American companies active in the field of the industrial gas turbine during the period 1940 -1980 have included amongst others:

A2

Allison

According to Allison, because General Electric lacked the resources to turn out the huge number of jet engines forecast in World War II (WWII), it enlisted Allison as a manufacturer. WWII ended before GE could get a jet engine into production, but it maintained its subcontracting arrangement with Allison. In 1995 the Allison Engine Company was bought by Rolls-Royce.

A3

Allis Chalmers (USA)

This company has its origins in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. In 1941 the US Durand committee awarded contract to Allis Chalmers and Westinghouse but Allis Chalmers dropped out of the gas turbine race in 1943. A 3500-HP Allis Chalmers Gas Turbine was tested during World War II at the Engineering Experiment Station, but this gas turbine was not ready for application until after the war. It was reported that in 1951 Allis Chalmers were developing both a rail traction gas turbine and an experimental marine gas turbine both to be operated on coal. The rail traction unit was under the sponsorship of the Coal Research Inst. The marine unit was for the US Navy.


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E1

Elliott Turbomachinery (USA)

William Swan Elliott was the founder of the original Elliott Company in 19 10. Elliott Turbomachinery Company Inc was formed in 1981 when they became part of the Carrier Corporation. Elliott had five gas turbine developments under way in 1951 and the range of sizes were from 2379 – 3,910bhp (1,775-2,920kW). Two of these turbines were for rail traction projects and the other three were for marine applications. Since 2000 Elliott Turbomachinery has been part of Ebara. Today they manufacture compressors.

G1

General Electric (Heavy Duty)

The General Electric Company (GE) heavy duty gas turbine division is based i n Schenectady, New York, USA. In 1918 GE started a gas turbine division when Dr. Stanford A. Moss developed the GE turbosupercharger engine during WWI. [62] Alan Howard, who led the GE development of the gas turbine first became involved with the steam turbine activities of the company in 1941. He played a key role in the development of the gas turbine in Schenectady for both aeronautical and land based applications. He was on a wartime subcommittee on jet and turbine power plants of the American National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. A 3,500kW gas turbine was installed by GE in Belle Island plant of Oklahoma Gas and Electric in 1949. The key paper describing the start of the GE work in the field of the industrial gas turbine is the A SME “Belle Island” paper presented in November 198 4 [31]. A similar 3,500kW gas turbine was installed at El Paso in 1953 and was still in operation 50 years later. Between 1966 to 1976 there were over 1400 gas turbine units installed in the USA each rated more than 3,500kW and right at the start gas turbines are also utilised in mechanical drive applications and not just power generation. In 1949 the first GE gas turbine locomotive went into service on a number of American railroads. Work had actually started on the locomotive engines before WWII under J.K. Salisbury. One of these locomotive engines was a slightly modified 3,500kW GE gas turbine as installed at the Belle Isle Station. Union Pacific was the only railroad in the United States to own and operate the gas turbine locomotives. The turbine drove an alternator/generator to supply electricity to electric motors mounted on the axles. Union Pacific's gas turbine fleet totalled 55 locomotives. The first ten production turbines, with 4,500hp were delivered in 1952, then fifteen more were ordered in 1954 and then thirty units of a larger model, were delivered between 1958 and 1961 with a rating of 8,500hp (6 ,340kW). These locomotives were replaced by more efficient diesel locomotives and in 1970 the turbines stopped running [63]. In the 1950s GE introduced their frame gas turbines scaled in size and units appeared with ratings of 16,000kW and 23,200kW. By 1965 there were further developments with increased firing temperatures and higher pressure ratios appearing. The first ever GE combined cycle plants were the City of Ottawa 11MW FS3 and the Wolverine Electric 21MW FS5 installed in 1967. In 1970 the Aluminium Smelter in Bahrain (ALBA) became the first ever gas turbine powered aluminium smelter in the world. Traditionally smelters had always used hydro power and been located where hydro was in abundance. In Bahrain they employed the Frame 5 unit with 24,000kW rating and they eventually installed 25 F5 machines in one line. In 1970 the Frame 7 gas turbine appeared with a rating of 47,200kW and a turbine inlet temperature of o 900 C. Then very quickly after that in 1972 the 7B with a rating of 51,800kW appeared. GE entered into a joint venture with Alsthom in the early 1970s to develop the Frame 9 single shaft machine to operate at 50 cycles. The first F9 machine was installed by EDF in Paris during 1975 it had a Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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rating of 80,700kW but this was only used for peak lopping duty. Five further units were built in 1979 (model 9B) these being for the Dubai Aluminium Smelter and thus the Frame 9 was used at base load for the first time in Dubai. The base load duty of the aluminium smelter proved to be an important testing ground for the Frame 9 machine. The Model E gas turbines started to appear in 1980 onwards and the unit ratings increased above 100MW. By 1988 the F7F arrived and that had a rating of 147,000kW with a pressure ratio of 13.5 and o turbine inlet temperature of 1260 C. In the 1990s the “E” range of machines continued to develop and o were widely used but with inlet temperatures around 1120 C. A further step was then taken in 1991 with o the “FA” range and inlet temperatures reaching 1316 C and the 9FA producing 240,000kW. A major difference in design approach was introduced as the GE older B and E class gas turbines had a hot end drive requiring an exhaust collector to the side or vertically upwards. These gas turbines were designed with simple cycle duty in mind since they were developed before combined cycles came into vogue but later applied in this duty. The F class gas turbines were developed with the combined cycle specifically in mind and had cold end drive to allow for an axial exhaust to heat recovery (HRSG). It is planned that later advances in technology will be covered in a further edition of the history (Part 2). These have included the H and J technologies, materials technology (including single crystal, ceramics, thermal barrier coating and advanced cooling technology). GE Energy has kindly provided presentation materials, tables and technical papers as their contri bution to this history and that is most appreciated.

G2

General Electric Company (Aero Derivatives)

GE started work on the aero jet engine in 1941 based on the Whittle design. The aero engine company is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Their first engine TG180 test flight was in 1942. The present day aeroderivatives all have their origins in the work during WWII. Between 1959 and 1970 GE developed the LM series of aero-derivative engines. The first LM turbine appeared in 1968 and was the LM1500 rated at 13.3MW . This was designated as the first 60 second start engine and installed at Millstone Point Nuclear station, CT, USA. The LM2500 aero-derivative was first used in 1969 in a marine application for the US Navy. This engine was then used for a pipeline application in 1971 and in 1979 the LM2500 with an output of 20,515 kW was installed on the Statfjord B platform in Norway. These engines are widely used today i n power generation, mechanical drive and marine applications. The range includes:LM500 LM1600 LM2500 LM6000 LMS100

6,000shp/ 4,500kW 19,120shp/ 13,700kW 33,600shp/ 25,000kW 57,330shp/ 42,750kW 100,000kW

Powers military patrol boat and commercial fast ferries Powers high-speed ferries and high-speed yachts Fast ferries, coast guard cutters, supply and cruise ships Used on offshore platforms in marine environments Simple cycle power generation - High efficiency

There is a huge and ongoing discussion in the industry about maintenance aspects and overall economics of aero-derivatives versus heavy industrial. Aero-derivatives however do have two advantages over heavy industrial types, these being performance in simple cycle mode and fast start. A recent survey has shown that aero-derivatives of all manufacturers have now taken 21% of the total market for industrial gas turbines.


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S2

Solar Turbines

Solar Turbines Inc is based in San Diego, USA and was formerly the Solar Aircraft Company formed in 1929. In the late 1940s, Solar won a U.S. Navy contract to develop and manufacture a 35kW (45hp) gas turbine to power portable pump units for fighting fires aboard ships. After that they were awarded another Navy contract to build 300kW (400hp) gas turbine to generate shipboard electrical power. Then in the 1950s they earned another contract for the U.S. Navy calling for development of a 750kW (1000hp) engine for high-speed boat propulsion. The result was the Saturn gas turbine, which entered production in 1960. The Saturn engine went on to become the World's most widely used industrial gas turbine with some 4800 units in 80 countries. It remains in production today i n two up-rated and enhanced configurations. Solar recognised that to win over customers from reciprocating equipment, the company would have to offer fully factory-assembled-and-tested turbo machinery packages, such as complete gas compressor sets, pump-drive packages and generator sets, rather than bare gas turbine engines. Work began in the mid-1960s on the Centaur gas turbine, which entered service in 1968 at 2,015kW (2,700hp). Today's Centaur 40 gas turbine delivers 3,520kW (4,700hp). In 1973, after 46 years, Solar left the aircraft/aerospace industry to concentrate i ts resources on industrial gas turbines, turbo machinery systems and support services. [64] Since 1981 Solar Turbines has been part of Caterpillar. The Company continues to market, design and manufacture Solar gas turbines today.

W1

Westinghouse

The contribution of Westinghouse in the development of the industrial gas turbine is really most remarkable. Westinghouse was originally based in Pennsylvania, USA and the Westinghouse Combustion Turbine Systems Division (CTSD) originally located, along with the Steam Turbine Systems Division (STSD) in Tinicum Township (Delaware County, Pennsylvania), near the Philadelphia International Airport. Westinghouse innovations included "the first combustion turbine used commercially in the United States, first use of cooled blades and vanes in an industrial unit, and the World's largest and most efficient combined cycle plant." The first commercial unit [2000hp W21] was fuelled by natural gas, and installed in 1949 at the Mississippi River Fuel Corporation and became "the first in the world to operate for more than 100,000 hours." In 1943 the first American designed and manufactured jet engine went on test at Westinghouse. They were the only American company to develop its own aero gas turbine without access to the work done by Whittle. In 1945 Westinghouse developed the W21 industrial gas turbine having a 2,000hp (1,500kW) rating. By 1948 Westinghouse had built a 4,000hp (3,000 kW) gas turbine locomotive for the Union Railroad using two W21 engines. When the railway decided scrap the locomotive and to go the diesel route these two engines were used for gas pipeline pumping and a power plant for peaking power generation. In 1952 the single shaft W81 was introduced with an output of 5,700kW and 21% thermal efficiency. At that time a whole fleet of gas turbine designs was investigated. The W31 rated at 2,200kW was introduced in 1956 and the W121 rated at 9,000kW introduced in 1959. In the early 1960s the 18,000kW W191 having a PR of 7:1 sold over 182 machines. The W191 evolved to become the W251 rated at 40,000kW. Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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In 1976 the Westinghouse Development Centre had the capability of full-scale testing of compressor, combustor, turbine, and auxiliary system components over the entire range of operating conditions (exhaust system designs were developed at reduced scale). I t was sized to enable full-scale combustion testing, which required a large, motor-driven air compressor. It also required a gas-fired heater to simulate combustor inlet conditions. The lab included a high-bay area to accommodate a full-size gas turbine, for testing and development purposes, as well other facilities needed to support the staff who operated the facility. [65] The Westinghouse 501 series of gas turbines was introduced from 1968-1998. These included: 1968 1973 1976 1982 1995 1992 1998

501A 501B 501D 501D5 501D5A 501F 501G

45,000kW 80,000 95,000 107,000 121,000 186,000 249,000

In 1998 the Westinghouse turbine business was purchased by Siemens, however, the Westinghouse designs are still being marketed within the Siemens ranges of gas turbines today. Up to 1992 Westinghouse had built some 915 gas turbines of their design including 227 of their Model 501 rated at 159MW. Siemens 60 Cycle Machines (2004) Previous Name

New Name

V84.2 W501D5A V84.3A W501F W501G

SGT6-2000E SGT6-3000E SGT6-4000F SGT6-5000F SGT6-6000G

Table 3

8.

The Japanese Companies

In Japan the first gas turbine power plant was No.1 gas turbine for generator unit installed in 1949 at the domestic oil company, Maruzen Oil Company. This was a 1,640kW single shaft machine and the manufacturer was Tokyo Shibaura Turbine Co. predecessor of the Toshiba Corporation. Around 1950 several turbine companies in Japan started prototype gas turbines and these included: H1 Hitachi Ltd I1 IHI Co M3 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) M4 Mitsui Shipbuilding and Engineering Co T1 Toshiba Corporation Japan’s gas turbine research was focused on developing a jet engine for aviation applications. In August 1945, Japan’s first flight using a domestic jet engine succeeded. However, when World War II ended, jet engine research was terminated. Although jet engine research was discontinued, gas turbine research for land and sea applications continued. In 1949, Japan successfully test operated a 2,000 HP industrial gas turbine.


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In the first half of the 1950s, m any domestic manufacturers started to develop prototype gas turbines and various gas turbine models were created. This work mainly focused on improving the gas turbine heat cycle to compensate for the lack of efficiency of compressors and turbines. In 1959, a wholly domestic gas turbine was accepted for use only in private power plants. From the late 1950s, to the beginning of the 1960s, domestic gas turbine suppliers partnered with US and European countries to manufacture simple cycle industrial gas turbines for the market. In the beginning of the 1960s, the Japanese economy made an extra ordinary improvement. Electrical appliances became readily available in most standard homes, and, in 1965, the spread of air conditioners made electricity demand peak in the summer. Since the gas turbine power plant had a short construction period and was easy to start and shut down, many large, advanced gas turbine power plants were built as peak-savers. It was a transition period from first generation gas turbines that used a non-cooling turbine blade to second generation gas turbines that used as forced air cooling turbine blade (bucket). The high performance and high efficiency gas turbines now operating in the market are improved and refined versions of the second generation gas turbines. In 1978, the “Moonlight Project” started and the Engineering Research Association for Advanced Gas Turbines was formed by 6 national research institutes along with 14 companies striving to develop a 100MW gas turbine that could achieve more than 55% LHV combined cycle efficiency. The combination of the advanced technologies of each gas turbine manufacturer throughout the 10-year project laid the foundation of Japan’s unique third generation gas turbines. In 1980, the combined cycle era began. Its efficiency exceeded that of the conventional power plants that were most popular at that time and the number of combined cycle power plants increased tremendously. Eventually large gas turbines began to replace conventional steam turbine power plants and their efficiency increased in line with the market needs. In 1990, a fourth generation gas turbine improved performance rapidly with a firing temperature increased from 1300°C to 1500°C. The improvements were made possible by an increase of material strength due to the development of super alloys and the adoption of crystal formation control, advanced turbine blade (bucket) cooling technology, blade coating technology and continuing improvements of dry low-NOx combustor, which was the world’s first proven premix fuel gas firing technology. In 2007 the world’s highest efficiency combined cycle power plant of 59%LHV was achieved by a domestic 1500°C class gas turbine. Acknowledgement is given to the Japan Internal Combustion Engine Federation (JICEF) for their assistance with this section and the Japan National Museum of Nature and Science for permission to publish the text [57]. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has achieved a great deal in the development of the industrial gas turbine and has been at the forefront of gas turbine technology. MHI has worked with Westinghouse Electric since 1923 when it first entered into a licence agreement for electrical equipment. Since 1965 MHI has had a technology exchange (cross licensing) agreement with Westinghouse Corporation for gas turbine technology and resulting from this agreement is manufacturing the advanced class of gas turbines. One technical paper published by MHI [45] revealed that up to 2004 it had supplied 429 gas turbines worldwide with 12 different fuels combinations.

9.

Research Establishments

There were many research establishments, which all played a notable part in the development of the industrial gas turbine. The following are amongst the more important of these:


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R1 Whetstone Gas Turbine Establishment This facility was located in Whetstone, Leicestershire and from 1941 became the centre of gas turbine development activity. This was initially established to meet the needs of Power Jets for a purpose built factory. It is claimed that this was the World’s first green-field site for the design, research, development and production of jet engines. It is in Whetstone that the testing and manufacture of the Whittle engine took place. The work on gas turbine research sponsored by the British government was carried out at Whetstone until the NGTE was established at Pyestock. In 1955 after the transfer to Pyestock this became the centre of gas turbine activity for English Electric and later GEC, then GEC Alsthom. Gas turbine testing was still being carried out at Whetstone in 2004 when the Royal Navy electric ship propulsion test facility was in operation. That last facility was in fact the proving of the 40MW gas turbine-electric motor units to be used in the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers now under construction in the UK. In August 2004 an official IDGTE technical visit was made to Whetstone, the site was still occupied by Alstom and electric ship propulsion testing was in progress in a new purpose built unit. The IDGTE visitors were also able to see the place where the Whittle engines were tested and the old Whittle test building was still in existence at that time.

R2 UK Fuel Research Station The UK Department of Scientific and Industrial Research unit was located in East Greenwich, London and was engaged in the development of the combustion aspects and blade (bucket) fouling in coal-fired gas turbine plant. [7] R3 UK National Physical Laboratory The NPL Teddington, Middlesex was involved in research into the properties and behaviour of metals at high temperatures. [7] R4 UK National Gas Turbine Establishment (NGTE) Pyestock. For more than fifty years the NGTE at Pyestock was the centre of development and testing of the gas turbine in the United Kingdom. It is claimed that in the first twenty years of its life it was the largest facility of its type in Europe. The work carried out there included testing of Concorde's Olympus jet engines and endurance checking of all gas turbines to be installed in the ships of the Royal Navy. In 1941 Power Jets continued to expand the Whetstone facilities and started engine component manufacture then in 1946 Power Jets was brought into the civil service and named The National Gas Turbine Establishment. In 1948, under the leadership of Roxbee Cox, a centralisation plan was implemented which would create one new site by moving the existing test facilities at Whetstone to Pyestock on a site north of the existing Pyestock site. At the same time, in 1951, the UK Government was keen to develop the gas turbine for marine propulsion and the Admiralty started directly collaborating with NGTE in basic research into many aspects of gas turbine technology [7]. In 1955 Whetstone ceased to be part of the The National Gas Turbine Establishment and key staff, equipment and facilities moved to the new Pyestock site. The Whetstone site then became part of English Electric before being merged into the GEC. In 1991 NGTE, RAE, ARE, and others became DERA (the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency). It is believed that gas turbine research work at Pyestock continued until July 2001 when DERA was split and a public company known as QinetiQ was formed. By then gas turbine research had matured and computer simulations took over. This resulted in Pyestock being run down and closed.


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Additional historical information on the NGTE is available on a web site put together by Simon Cornwell [51] together with photographs. Another related article on the NGTE is by Phil Retter [56].

R5 Pametrada The Parsons Marine Engineering Research and Development Association, Pametrada, was based at Wallsend-on-Tyne, United Kingdom. This organisation was located by the River Tyne and funded by Industry. The firms supporting Pametrada by pooling their gas turbine research activity included General Electric Co (UK), Centrax, Harland & Wolff, Blackburn & General Aircraft Co and the marine engineering works of the shipbuilders. [32] The survey of Power Jets of 1951 [7] records that Pametrada had designed and built a 3500 hp gas turbine for use for ship propulsion and that unit was under test in 1951. I t is also recorded that John Brown built a Pametrada designed gas turbine. A history of the Wallsend Research Station is written in a book by R.F. Darling [32] and this gives an enthusiastic account of the research performed at the Parsons Marine Engineering Turbine Research and Development Association and subsequently at the British Ship Research Association (BSRA). It was said that in 1945 it was an exciting time to start a marine based career. From the beginning Pametrada strove and succeeded in keeping Britain technologically in the forefront in maritime related areas. In July 1952 Pametrada were advertising for staff to work on gas turbine design, testing, combustion and research [66]. Pametrada merged with the British Ship Research Association (BSRA), also in Wallsend, in 1962 and this brought together two similar organisations. In 1967 government funding was being given to BSRA.

R6 Japan In Japan in 1978 the Engineering Research Association for Advanced Gas Turbines was formed by six national research institutes along with 14 companies.

10.

A Few Noteworthy Early Installations

There have been many milestone gas turbine projects, all of which have played a notable part in the development of the industrial gas turbine. Just three have been selected here.

UK1

Ashford Common Pumping Station

The Ashford Common pumping station was built for the Metropolitan Water Board, London between 1952 and 1955. This generating station included three similar 2,500kW gas turbines. There was one machine from English Electric, one from Metrovick and one from Brush Electrical. Ashford common pumping station is still in existence at this time although the gas turbines are no longer in service. A most interesting aspect of this installation is that the three gas turbines and the building are still i n existence today, more that 55 years since it was built.

UK2

RAE(B) Gas Turbine Generating Station

The Gas Turbine Generating Station at the Royal Aircraft Establishment “RAE(B)”, Thurleigh, Bedford in the United Kingdom. The facility was constructed from 1948 to 1958, and was Government owned. It was located on two main sites; the Wind Tunnels Site (colloquially known as Twinwoods) and the Airfield Site (sometimes referred to as Thurleigh Airfield). RAE(B) was conceived after the 2nd World War as the National Aircraft Establishment (NAE). The NAE was planned to have a 7 mile long runway incorporating the wartime Airfields of Thurleigh and Little Staughton (this was when it was thought that larger and faster aircraft would require longer runways); a communications Airfield at Twinwoods (made famous by Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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Glen Miller) and a site in between that would house Aircraft factories and Hangars (this site eventually became the Wind Tunnels Site). The Wind Tunnels Site had five major wind tunnels including a Low Speed Tunnel, a Transonic Tunnel, a Hypersonic Tunnel, a Supersonic Tunnel and a Vertical Spinning Tunnel. The Gas Turbine Generating Station housed two English Electric Gas Turbine units each rated at 20MW 50 Hz. The generators were capable of being operated at frequencies below 50Hz, therefore the station was very often referred to as the Variable Frequency Generating Station. It is understood that the only other place such Gas Turbines were sited was in Canada. The two at RAE(B) were really something quite special having four shafts laid out in an “H” format each comprising 2 HP Sets, an LP set and a Turbine Generator Set. Air was drawn in through large banks of filters into the Low Pressure Compressor driven by a Low Pressure Turbine; air from the LP Compressor was fed through large ducting and heat exchangers into the inlets of 2 HP Compressors from which some air was bled through Combustion Chambers (fired with Gas Oil, similar to Diesel Oil) which was then mixed with the remaining air before entering the 2 HP Turbines (that drove the HP Compressors). The exhaust from the HP Turbines was fed through further large ducting into 2 LP Turbines one of which drove the LP Compressor and the other the Generator. Balancing ducts, controlled by valves, would adjust air/gas flows as required. The exhaust from the LP Turbines was discharged through 4 large chimneys. The chimneys were designed such that heat recovery units could be installed at a later date, but never were. The plant has now been removed however in 2010 the gas turbine building and chimneys were still there to be seen with “Google Aerial Photographs”. The chimneys can be seen between the Generating Station and the adjacent Wind Tunnel Plant Building. Thanks is given to Alstom Rugby, several former members of staff at RAE(B) and the RAE(B) historical association for their assistance in providing information about this unique gas turbine installation.

UK3

Proteus Generating Plant - West Country

The Oldest Aero Derivative Still in Service. An IDGTE survey of 2003 found that after 44 years of operation the world’s first aero derivative gas turbine powered industrial power generator had been de commissioned earlier that year. A 2.7 MW Proteus unit was sited at Princetown in the West Country, commissioned 11th December 1959, was also the first gas turbine to have remote starting and control. With some of the West Country towns being at the end of relatively small capacity and lengthy grid transmission lines, the Proteus sets installed at St Mawes, Mevagissy, Porlock, Princetown and Linton provided emergency supply back-up and stability to the local electricity system. Over the years a s demand increased, the grid systems were enhanced with a new HV lines feeding these towns and with the introduction of these higher capacity lines the requirement for the Proteus diminished. Ironically with privatisation of the electricity industry and relatively recent change in trading arrangements, a new business opportunity arose. The Proteus sets had probably ran for more hours in the last five years than in the previous twenty-five. The Princetown engine has now been re-located to the Museum of Internal Fire in North Wales and the rest scrapped [47]. This leaves the Proteus engine 10004 as the oldest operation unit. Built in Jan 1961, 10004 was sold and installed at the English China Clay site in Cornwall. When this site closed after failure of the ac generator, the engine was purchased by Magnox to support the gas turbine installations at Wylfa and Oldbury Nuclear power stations. Since this report was made in 2003 the Museum of Internal Fire has now re-commissioned the Princetown engine and a ceremony took place in June 2010 at which time the IMechE has given a this Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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engine a heritage award. Additional information is to be found in the paper of the South Western Electricity Historical Society [47]. List of Industrial Gas Turbine Manufacturers Code A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 C1 C2 E1 E2 E3 E4 G1 G2 H1 I1 J1 K1 L1 L2 M1 M2 M3 M4 N1 P1 R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 S1 S2 S3 S4 T1 T2 U1 W1

Name of Gas Turbine Manufacturer

Country

W.H. Allen Engineering Allison Gas Turbine Division Allis Chalmers Alsthom / Alstom Associated Electrical Industries Austin Motor Company Bristol Siddeley British Thomson Houston (BTH) Brown Boveri / ABB - Baden Brush Electrical Budworth Turbines Centrax Gas Turbines C A Parsons & Co Elliott Turbomachinery English Electric Company/ General Electric Company (GEC) – Heavy Industrial English Electric Company/ General Electric Company (GEC) – Aero Derivatives Escher Wyss General Electric Company (USA) – Heavy Industrial General Electric Company (USA) – Aero Derivatives Hitachi IHI John Brown & Co/ John Brown Engineering Kongsberg/ Dresser-Rand Joseph Lucas (Gas Turbine Equipment) Leyland Gas Turbines Metropolitan Vickers (Metrovick) Mercier (Societe COMET) Mitsubishi Heavy industries (MHI) Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Nuovo Pignone Power Jets Rateau Rolls-Royce Rover Company Ruston & Hornsby (R&H) - Ruston Russian / Soviet States Siemens - Schuckert Werke Solar Stal-Laval/ ASEA Sulzer / Brown Boveri Sulzer (BST) Toshiba Corporation Turbomeca United Technologies/ Turbo Power & Marine/ Pratt & Whitney Westinghouse

UK USA USA France UK UK UK UK Switzerland UK UK UK UK USA UK UK Switzerland USA USA Japan Japan UK Norway UK UK UK France Japan Japan Italy UK France UK UK UK Russia Germany USA Sweden Switzerland Japan France USA USA

Table 4 Industrial Gas Turbine Manufacturers


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The References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

3

Thomas Hawksley Lecture. Address by Captain H. Riall Sankey on Heat Engines to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in November 1917. The Combustion Gas Turbine: Its History, Development and Prospects. Dr. Adolf Meyer. Brown Boveri Company. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers. London. February 1939. New Steam Age , The Magazine of Modern Steam Power, Vol. 1 No. 1, Jan. 1942 3 Gas Turbines for Industrial Power - An Introduction for the Prospective User. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 201 - R.J. Welsh. English Electric Company, Rugby. London 1948 The Design and Operation of the Parsons Experimental Gas Turbine. Presented by A.T. Bowden and J.L. Jefferson. C.A. Parsons. Newcastle upon Tyne. IMechE Proceedings 454-471. June 1948 The Industrial gas Turbine by E.C. Roberson PhD. Book published by Temple Press 1951 The Story of the British Gas Turbine. A Festival Survey. Power Jets Research and Development. 1951 Rover Gas Turbine Car. BBC News 8-March-1950: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/8/newsid_2516000/2516271.stm Operating Experience with a 750kW Gas Turbine. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 218 - G.R. Feilden. Ruston & Hornsby. Lincoln. 1951 Operation of a Marine Gas Turbine under Sea Conditions. John Lamb & R.M Duggan. Presented to the Institute of Marine Engineers in October 1953. Published in “The British Motor Ship”. November 1953. Research on the Performance of a type of Internally Air Cooled Turbine Blade. By D.G. Ainley of NGTE. IMechE proceedings vol 167 p366 Operating Experience with Gas Turbines with Particular Reference to Benzau Power Station. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 234 E.A. Kerez. Brown Boveri, Switzerland. 1954 Paper presented to IMechE in 1958. W.H. Allen Gas Turbine. Arthur Pope British Developments in Gas Turbines. Harold Roxbee Cox, A.T. Bowden, R.J. Welsh and Prof. W.R. Hawthorne. Mono #10. World Power Conference – Rio de Janeiro 1954. The Development of the Industrial Gas Turbine. Dr Claude Seippel. Brown Boveri & Co, Baden, Switzerland. IMechE London. October 1965. Presented at a meeting in London on 24 November 1965. Industrial Closed Cycle Gas Turbines for Conventional and Nuclear Fuel. C. Keller and D. Schmidt. Escher Wyss. March 1967. Focus on Small Gas Turbines up to 1200hp. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 323 - C.R. Simmons. English Electric Diesels. 1968 Gas Turbines and the Total Energy Concept. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 325 - K.A. Bray and J.R. Tyler. Ruston Turbine Division, English Electric. 1969 Gas Turbine Developments. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 336 - B. Wood. Merz and McLellan. 1970 Operating Experience with Gas Turbines within the C.E.G.B. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 339 - R.G. Henbest. Earley Power Station. 1970 The Selection of Gas Turbines for Electric Power Generation. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 349 - A.H. Eynstone. Kennedy & Donkin. 1972 Land Gas Turbines 10-80 MW. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 355 - O.R. Schmoch. Kraftwerk Union Aktiengesellschaft. 1973 Small Industrial Gas Turbine Developments. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 368 – W.J.R. Stocks. Ruston Gas Turbines Ltd. Lincoln. 1975 The Combined Gas/ Steam Total Energy Cycle. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 369 – Prof. R.W. Stuart Mitchell. Delft University, Holland. 1975 Ruston and the Gas Turbine. A Publication by Ruston Gas Turbines. Lincoln. C1975 Sawyers Gas Turbine Catalogues (published annually). 1963 to 1976 edition. Publisher Gas Turbine Publications Inc. 80 Lincoln Avenue, Stamford. Conn. USA. The Design and Application of All Radial Industrial Gas Turbine. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 376 – Simon Dunton. A/S Kongsberg Vapenfabrikk. Kongsberg, Norway. 1977 Land Based and Offshore Applications of High Power Industrial Gas Turbines. DEUA/ IDGTE paper 376 – R. Coates. Constructors John Brown. Glasgow. 1978 Gas Turbine World Handbooks. 1976 to 1980. Pequot Publishing Inc. GTW Handbook, PO Box 447, Southport, Conn. 06490. USA. The Parsons Centenary – A Hundred Years of Steam Turbines. F.R. Harris Presented at a meeting of the IMechE. 1984 3,500kW Gas Turbine at the Schenectady Plant of the General Electric Company. ASME November 1984. 40 years of progress: A history of the Wallsend Research Station, 1945-1985 R. F. Darling published by British Maritime Technology. 1985 Neuchatel (1939). The World’s F irst Industrial gas Turbine Set. Brown Boveri. ASME Heritage paper. 1988 Gas Turbines. Machinery Handbook. B. Wood. 1989 Sir Charles Parsons and electrical power generation – a turbine designer’s perspective. IMechE Proceedings. 1994 GE Combined Cycle Experience. Chris Maslak. GE Energy (GER3651). 1994 The Parsons-North British Coal-Burning Gas Turbine Locomotive. J.R. Bolter. Newcastle upon Tyne. Presented at a Newcomen Society meeting in London. 1995

Formerly the Diesel Engineers and U sers Association (DEUA) now The Institution of Diesel and Gas Turbine Engineers (IDGTE)


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38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

Development of the Siemens Gas Turbine and Technology Highlights. Volker Leiste. Siemens Erlangen. 1999 SWEB’s Pocket Power Stations. South Western Electricity Historical Society. John Gale. 1999 The Historical Evolution of Turbomachinery. Cyrus Meher-Homji. Bechtel, Houston, USA. Turbomachinery Symposium September 2000. The Gas Turbine - Development and Engineering. Book published 2003. Norman Davey. A single focus: Uniform Nomenclature for Siemens Power Generation Products - Siemens 2004. John Brown Engineering – power contractors to the world. John Hood. Book published 2004. Alstec – The first purpose built Jet Engine Factory in the UK – Whetstone Leicester. Published by GEC Alsthom. Alstec. 2004 Design for Blast Furnace gas Firing Gas Turbine. Komori, Yamagami and Hara. Mitsuibishi Heavy Industries. Takasago, Japan. 2004. Advanced Gas Turbine Materials and Coatings. P.W. Schilke. GE Energy (GER3569) 2004 Closed Gas Turbine Cycles – operating experience and future potential. Hans Ulrich Frutschi. Published by ASME. 2005 Hero: John Lamb Marine Engineer. Paper by Dr RJF Hudson. Institution of Mechanical Engineers. May 2005. Gas Turbine Engineering Handbook. Third Edition. Meherwan Boyce. 1996 rd Gas Turbine Handbook. Principles and Practices. 3 Edition. Anthony Giampaolo. 2006 The National Gas Turbine Research Establishment. Phil Cornwall. 2006. http://www.ngte.co.uk/a/chs/index.htm Re-designation of the ASME landmark Award for the GT Neuchatel on 4 June 2007. Alstom Power Switzerland. 2007 Gas Turbines – A handbook of Air, Land and Sea Applications. Claire Soares. 2008 Coal Gasification and Future Gas Turbine Fuel Supplies. Ronald Hunt. Published by IDGTE. 2008 The History of the Siemens Gas Turbine. June 2008. Siemens Power Generation Inc. Pyestock – The National Gas Turbine Research Establishment. Article by Phil Retter. International Stationary Steam Society. 2008 http://www.ngte.co.uk/a/isses/c4urbex.pdf Japanese Gas Turbine Developments. Historical account (in Japanese). Author - Toshikazu Ikegami. Published by the National Museum of Nature and Science Tokyo. 2009 Professor Jakob Ackeret 1898-1981. A Pioneer of Modern Aerodynamics. Founder IfA - Institute of Fluid Dynamics. Zurich. 2009 http://www.ifd.mavt.ethz.ch Allison Gas Turbines http://www.answers.com/topic/allison-gas-turbine-division The industrial Gas Turbine Global Maintenance Market. December 2009. http://www.aerostrategy.com/downloads/press_releases/AeroStrategy_IGT_O_M_OVERVIEW.pdf A Brief History of Parsons gas turbines. John Bolter. Newcastle upon Tyne. 2010 Dr. Stanford A. Moss http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blenginegasturbine.htm GE Turbine Locos http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/history/loco/locohs05.shtml Solar Turbines http://mysolar.cat.com/cda/layout?m=35503&x=7 Westinghouse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Combustion_Turbine_Systems_Division Pametradahttp://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1952/1952%20-%202057.html Museum of Internal Fire - Tanygroes, Ceredigion, near Cardigan, Wales http://www.internalfire.com/ W.H. Allen Engineering Association web site: www.whallenengasn.org.uk Austin Motor Company: http://www.austinmemories.com/page19/page19.html World’s First Gas Turbine Tanker: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkpdf&contentId=16884 55&StyleSheetView=Text John Dumbell Patent: http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/lyman-horace-weeks/ Turbine Controls, Oadby, Leicester http://www.tcluk.net/uploads/1277737948 Centripetal Turbine Patent November 1962. Lloyd Johnson. Caterpillar Company. California, USA http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3063673.pdf Rover Gas Turbine Car specifications: http://www.rover.org.nz/pages/jet/jet5.htm Allis Chalmers. http://www.dt.navy.mil/div/about/galleries/gallery2/033.html

Company Acknowledgements: The Author thanks the following companies and organisations who have directly contributed to the research by providing comments and assistance leading to the publication of this history: Alstom Rugby Centrax Turbines UK Cranfield University Gas Turbine World General Electric USA IDGTE - The Institution of Diesel and Gas Turbine Engineers Ronald Hunt Morpeth United Kingdom

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IDGTE Paper 582

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