Micro Gas Turbine – A Review

Turbomachines is a class of machines which comprise of turbines and compressors. These machines are widely used for power generation, aircraft propulsion and in a wide range of heavy and medium industries. When we scale down these large turbines, we get micro turbines, which are compact and miniaturized form of these large turbines. The process of scaling down a turbine is not as simple as it looks like, it is a very tedious job and researches are going on in this area. These micro gas turbines are usually found with a power generating capacity of 250kW. They use any gas like natural gas, biogas, etc. as its input. The advantages of a micro gas turbine are that it has high expansion ratio and less moving components. The drawbacks of these turbines are that it requires high angular velocity as well as advanced electronics which can convert electricity of high frequency which gets produced into useful frequency of 50/60 Hz. This turbine is a very viable solution for distributed power generation which can be used for stationary energy applications. Also, micro gas turbine has found great use as cogeneration systems. These micro gas turbines can produce power between less than a kilowatt to hundreds of watts, which can be used for various purposes like electricity generation or head creation. These turbines are cost-effective, eco-friendly and pollution free as they can work by burning any gas like natural gas, land fill gas, etc. The manuscript presented gives an outlook on the past, present and future of these micro gas turbines. This paper will discuss the advantages and its uses. It will also discuss the drawbacks and the limitations of these turbines. This manuscript will prove to be a reference to all the researchers who want work in this field