Orbiting Combustor Nozzle jet engine

Have there been any developments with this?

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/02/27/212333/new-israeli-design-of-orbiting-combustor-nozzle-jet-engine-promises-fuel-efficiency-gains-of.html

An Israeli company, sponsored by the country's defence ministry, is developing a new type of jet engine based on an orbiting combustor nozzle (OCN).

The company, R-Jet Engineering , employs mainly new immigrants from Russia who worked in the Soviet Union's aerospace industry. State-owned Rafael Armament Development Authority owns 10% of the company's shares.

According to company president David Lior, the OCN concept allows the compressor- created vortex to flow continuously through an annular combustor into a coaxial turbine, instead of dissipating.

The combustor rotates with the compressor and turbine. The turbine design is similar to a convergent-divergent nozzle, he says, capable of transmitting high power at higher efficiencies.

According to Lior, the OCN eliminates expensive components such as the compressor diffuser and turbine stator. It also overcomes their related losses and enables efficient cooling of the turbine, he says. Joseph Maayan, former director general of the Israeli defence ministry and the company's chairman, says a technology demonstrator is already working and the "results are very encouraging".

The design can be used in turboshaft, turbojet and turbofan engines, says R-Jet. The company claims an OCN turboprop rated at 640shp (480kW) will have a thermal efficiency of 32%, compared with 23% for a conventional turboprop. Fuel consumption will be 0.43lb/shp/h (262g/kWh) compared with 0.63-0.65 for current engines, it adds.

Several major engine manufacturers are in negotiations to use the technology, says R-Jet. Talks with Pratt & Whitney did not result in an agreement, the company says, because of a demand for marketing exclusivity. "We are in serious talks with a number of potential investors. With another $25 million we can offer a series-production OCN engine in three years," says Maayan.

From this weeks Economist

Jet engines rely on Isaac Newton’s third law of motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When a jet is running, a compressor at the front draws in air and compresses it (see illustration). This air is guided and diffused by static blades to allow for easier ignition when it is mixed with fuel and ignited in a combustion chamber. The reaction comes in the form of rapidly expanding hot gases, which blast out of the rear of the jet and thus drive the aircraft forward. As they do so, they pass through another set of static blades which direct and accelerate the hot gases to turn a turbine. The turbine is connected by a shaft to the compressor at the front, thus turning it and keeping the whole process running.

The approach taken by R-Jet involves having the air and hot gases in the combustor rotate with the compressor and turbine. To achieve this, the company uses what it calls an orbiting combustion nozzle (OCN), which turns with the compressor to inject the air into the combustion chamber as a vortex. The vortex is maintained by blades that rotate on the inner casing of the combustor. This swirling action helps mix the air and fuel for a more complete and much quicker combustion. The hot gases then exit, also in a vortex, to drive the turbine.

This, says Dr Lior, eliminates the need for the two sets of static blades. That means an OCN engine can be built more cheaply with fewer components. It would also need to be only half the size of a conventional jet of similar power, says Dr Lior. The engine would use at least 25% less fuel and, he claims, its emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide would be cut by three-quarters because of its unique ignition properties.

So why are airlines not beating their way to R-Jet’s door? The company, founded by a group of Israeli military officials and jet-turbine experts from the former Soviet Union, has built a technology demonstrator but needs a bigger partner to take the concept further. As with any radical change to an existing technology, especially a jet engine, a large installed base of expertise together with lots of regulation mean it can be hard for a newcomer to make headway. To ease its entry into the market, R-Jet reckons that OCN engines could be used first as generators to produce electricity, or to power unmanned drone aircraft. Having established a track record for themselves in this way, the engines could then migrate to their intended use on airliners.

I'm surprised nobody thought of this earlier...

Uh, I thought stators --Or contra-rotors-- were essential for both compressor and turbine stages for efficiency, lest too much power is lost due to low relative flow speed over the blades...


Still, neat notion, especially if they can get it to work ...



FWIW, I still can't figure how Reaction Engine's contra-rotating design is supposed to work...
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/contraturbines.html

Nik said:

FWIW, I still can't figure how Reaction Engine's contra-rotating design is supposed to work...

Click to expand...

??? Should be the same way the turbine section of General Electric's UDF worked.

UDF = Un Ducted Fan, according to Wiki (YMMV) but the Reaction Engine design doesn't seem to hang anything outside the casing...


Will probably deserve a 'face-palm' reaction when explained...

Are we talking Griffiths concepts revisited? That would increase relative velocities, I think.