ASME IGTI Industrial Gas Turbine Technology Award Lecture

Advances in Industrial Turbines – From Neuchâtel to La Porte

4:00pm, Thursday, June 27, 2024

Speaker: Jayanta Kapat

World's first electric power-generating gas turbine to go into commercial operation was installed in 1939 at the municipal power station in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. This 4 MW gas turbine is now recognized as an International Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. Over the past 8 decades, there has been tremendous improvement in industrial gas turbines, resulting in overall cycle efficiency to increase from 10's to 40's in percentages. This significant increase in cycle efficiency has been possible because of many factors, the most prominent of which have been improvement in advanced internal cooling technologies and improvement in coating and material technologies. However, the working fluid and overall cycle configuration essentially remained mostly unchanged over these 8 decades. Over the past decade or two, attention has been given to a different working fluid and a different cycle configuration. New technologies and innovations, based on super-critical carbon dioxide as the working fluid, have led to a 50 MWth, first-of-its-kind demonstration power plant in La Porte, Texas, which achieved first fire in May of 2018. The presentation will cover this 80-year long journey.