Bladeless Gas Turbine/Jet Engine

[LeanMixture]

I am building a gas turbine engine that uses two stages of Tesla turbines and vortex tubes as combustion chambers.

I already built the core of the engine which was the most difficult part because I wanted it to be smooth and fit tight without any bolts or rivets so nothing interrupts the air flow. I tested it by forcing compressed air at 20 PSI and it looked promising in terms of high rotation speed and it multiplies the air output. Hopefully by the next month I can run it on propane after I install the igniters and so on there are still some parts to build.

All comments and constructive criticism are much appreciated.

Michael Labib

[SuperCaviTationIstic]

Looks and sounds cool... any more pictures?

just curious as to what your intentions for the final output were. Direct thrust propulsion, coupled to a mechanical output for moving a vehicle, or as a driving force for a generator?

If you're interested in electrical generation, did you know there was a patent I think in the 1970s for ionizing the intake air to a vortex tube and it produces a charge separation in addition to the heat separation. Also, it would form 2 magnetic fields, one in the other, because if a charge separation happens between the inner and outer laminar flows, and they are both turning in the same direction, then their magnetic fields are in opposite directions, thus forming a toroidal magnetic field, but not the ring type most people associate with a toroidal magnetic field. I would add a capacitor plate on the outside of each output tube too, linked to the opposite end tube, to help keep the charge separation up.

[LeanMixture]

Sounds interesting thank you for the input. My initial plan is to use the mechanical power for power generation and then install a slightly modified GEET system to enable me to run it on any hydrocarbon fuel including used car oil. However I was told if I use it for propulsion on a go cart or something similar it will draw more attention to the concept so more people would build similar devices if mine proved to be successful.

The purpose of using vortex tubes as combustion chambers is to confine the flame in the inner vortex so it concentrate the heat in the center without heating up the walls which makes it possible to use inexpensive alloys for construction and become more efficient in terms of heat loses. I attached more pictures.

Michael Labib

[gene gene]

Hi Michael, Good to see you here. Thanks for the pictures, any more?
Gene

[wayne.ct]

Gas flow ?

Interesting. I am curious about the flow of compressed air/combustion gas through your design. I am having a bit of a time visuallizing how this works. Perhaps you could supply a diagram? Thanks....

[LeanMixture]

Interesting. I am curious about the flow of compressed air/combustion gas through your design. I am having a bit of a time visuallizing how this works. Perhaps you could supply a diagram? Thanks....

The first stage Tesla turbine takes the surrounding air push it through the Vortex tube and then fuel is mixed and burned in it and then the expanding mixture is fed to the second stage Tesla turbine which is connected to the first stage by a shaft it is simple but the hard part to built is the core because I wanted to make it free of bolts and rivets so nothing inturrpts the air flow.

[LeanMixture]

Hi Michael, Good to see you here. Thanks for the pictures, any more?
Gene

Thanks Gene, I will try to show a vedio of it while being tested by compressed air and show other components before I start building the rest because it will be covered. The thing is I do not have a copressor so I have to take it out to make the vedio.

Michael

[LeanMixture]

[Allcanadian]

@LeanMixture
As luck would have it I have quite a few years of R&D with micro-turbines and built a few turbine simulators to speed up the calculations. If you have any issues or questions you can PM me, excellent build.

The issue your having is "match point", this is when the work required by the compressor is equal to the work generated by the gas turbine. As well the compressor and gas turbine must have an equal mass rate of flow, calculated by tip velocity minus slip in your case times total area between sections.

I like to think of it this way, this is a constant pressure machine and the compressor must hold the internal working pressure while adding combustion air. The combustor heats this air but should not produce a pressure rise nor drop in pressure, it is neutral. The gas turbine must hold this internal pressure while extracting energy from the expansion of the hot gasses back to atmospheric conditions. The work here is not the pressure as it is constant throughout the machine, the work is due to the fact that working gas is hot and expands more in the gas section than it contracts in the compressor section while the mass rate of flow remains equal. This is not a pressure engine it is a heat engine.

You may also want to consider pre-whirl as I believe it is the most underrated addition that can be made to a gas turbine yet can be very effective.

Regards
AC

[LeanMixture]

[Allcanadian]

@LeanMixture

I have built a few experimental pulse jet engines and a pulse detonation engine as well. The pulse detonation engine fired once and I could hear it echo for some 20 seconds across town ... I never fired it again, lol. I was actually quite surprised I didn't blow out all the neighbors windows because the sound was horrific, it is unimaginable.

What your proposing sounds like an excellent idea and most people seldom if ever fully consider the inertial properties of a fluid. I had done a few experiments in this area from my research on Victor Schauberger. You know this may have another area of application as a simple variation of the micro-hydro ram pump. Conversion of a low head/low flow stream into an intermittent high velocity utilized by a Tesla turbine/generator acting as a valve. The "valve" is not downstream it is upstream as the inertia properties have no preference one way or the other.

I believe schauberger was using a similar effect with his vortex process, it was also a non-material one way valve which caused the flow to "choke" in one direction. Now imagine a valve which isn't actually a valve it is a gas and never wears out. Schauberger was a sly old fox and I believe he deserves more credit than he was ever given.


Regards
AC

[Mad Scientist]

Ah another crazy person working with the Tesla Turbine. Why this is such a simple device that anyone can whip one out in no time and start running stuff. Right? Why at a quick glance the turbine is such a deceptively simple device, this should be no problem, well that is until you actually try to build one. You then find that there is precious little really good design data available.

History shows us the reason, Tesla developed the turbine around 1911 and was working with it until about 1922. In that time he built a number of models of different sizes. The biggest one had a 5 ft. diameter rotor, if I remember right and ran about 3600 RPM and produced 650 HP. But all his models were just engineering prototypes none of which ever became real productionhim, the engineers blamed Tesla for not listening to themmight be a bit tricky to do.

I have not done any experiments relating to disc smoothness. However from what I have read the flatter, the smoother, the more highly polished the disc is, the better it works.

All the drawings that I have seen of different rotor discs show great big gaping exhaust holes at the center of the rotor. These large holes obviously weaken the rotor. Naturally we do not want excessive back-pressure, but just how big an exhaust port is big enough?

To find out I made a cap to go over the exhaust of my turbine. In it I drilled a hole to mount a pressure gauge and very small hole for the exhaust. As expected I had high back-pressure and reduced speed. Drilling out the exhaust hole in small steps caused the back-pressure to drop and speed to increase. (No surprise here) However by the time the exhaust hole was the same diameter as my inlet line

[LeanMixture]

[MonsieurM]

3D Printed Tesla Valve - YouTube

don't know if you ever saw it at work

and do you think Tesla ever tested with disk magnets instead of simple disks :

Neodymium magnet in copper pipe - YouTube ..... if so what do you think happens the magnets when the RPM is very high ( Magnetic and electric effects on water + Google )...... just wondering

thank you again for sharing your observations of your experiments

[LeanMixture]

3D Printed Tesla Valve - YouTube

don't know if you ever saw it at work

and do you think Tesla ever tested with disk magnets instead of simple disks :

Neodymium magnet in copper pipe - YouTube ..... if so what do you think happens the magnets when the RPM is very high ( Magnetic and electric effects on water + Google )...... just wondering

thank you again for sharing your observations of your experiments