In a recent article published by Gas Turbine World, I offered a look at the idea of using gas turbines for land propulsion — powering trucks, trains, cars. Why now, and why this topic, one may wonder? Foremost, it is a fun subject; however there is a lot more. In the realm of science and technology, it is imperative to be familiar with what has been done and discarded.
Sometimes, one can rediscover a “nugget” that can be a viable solution with the present state-of-the-art in materials, computational resources and manufacturing techniques which were not available back then. In many others, immense savings of limited resources will be realized by not wasting them on futile (then, now, and forever) endeavors. The biggest lesson, however, is how not to invest those limited resources into developing proverbial “silver bullets” as solutions to immediate, seemingly intractable problems.
Related reading: see “On the move: gas turbines for land-based propulsion.”
Human ingenuity in coming up with innovative solutions to existing and, in many cases non-existing, problems is an undeniable fact. Also undeniable is the human folly in insisting on infeasible and, sometimes, bizarre concepts in direct contradiction to hard-to-refute technical and economical facts.
One manifestation of this is the desire to invent “silver bullet” technologies to fight the insurmountable odds in an otherwise unwinnable battle. Gas turbine power plants for cars and trucks (well below 1,000 hp) is an example of futilely insisting on an application of a technology knowing there is no chance of it replacing the existing technology with better efficiency, emissions, capex/opex, and performance (except for high “brake torque”).
In the end, fundamental thermodynamics and aerodynamics dictate the barriers: superiority of constant volume combustion vis-à-vis constant pressure combustion, difficulty of achieving respectable component efficiencies at small blade/annulus sizes and high speeds, and the cost of manufacturing high temperature parts from exotic materials.
History’s lesson for today’s battles
Today, the almost unwinnable battle is global warming and its predicted catastrophic finale via disastrous climate change. The silver bullet is a collection of solutions under the collective name of decarbonization, which is a worthy goal.
It is readily achievable with conventional, cost-effective technologies as proven by the example of the U.S. (i.e., the switch from coal to natural gas) combined with renewable technologies and energy consumption management. Yet, there is almost an hysterical expenditure of resources on downright ludicrous technologies, which can be (and are) easily dead ends.
The chances of those technologies slowing (or reversing) global warming are as good as those of the Wehrmacht, with a few hundred turbopanzers, stopping the Red Army, with its millions of soldiers and thousands of T-34 tanks, at the gates of Berlin,
