Published Resources Details
Journal Article
- Title
- Victorian brown coal as a fuel for gas turbines
- In
- Journal of the Institution of Engineers, Australia
- Imprint
- vol. 29, no. 7-8, Jul-Aug 1957, pp. 179-186
- Description
This paper, No.1261, originated in the Melbourne Division of The Institution and was presented before a Joint Meeting of the Division and the Aeronautical Engineering Branch on 18th October, 1955.
The author, J. C. Wisdom, BMechE AMIEAust, is a Principal Scientific Officer, Aeronautical Research Laboratory, Commonwealth Department of Supply.
[This paper was awarded the Mechanical Engineering Prize 1957]
- Abstract
Following the extensive development of the aircraft gas turbine during World War II, the knowledge accumulated was applied to the industrial gas turbine and resulted in the evolution of a prime-mover which could compete with the diesel engine and small steam turbine in certain industrial applications.
In the early post-war period, only the more expensive distillate fuels and natural gas were considered suitable as fuel for the industrial gas turbine; residual oil fuels and solid fuels were not acceptable because of their ash constituents which were likely to contaminate the working elements of the engine, notably the combustor and turbine. But the relatively low price of such fuels provided a strong incentive to solving the technical difficulties involved in their use, and considerable research effort was expended in many countries to this end.
Anticipation of a growing interest in the gas turbine by Australian industry led the Aeronautical Research Laboratory to a study of local problems of gas turbine operation, and some of the factors have already been discussed in Ref.1. After considering these, it appeared that the most suitable subject for an experimental investigation was a study of the problems, associated with burning solid fuels, which formed Australia's only indigenous source of fuel.
It was necessary, at the outset, to decide on the type of fuel to be evaluated, since it was realised that each broad coal type would have its own peculiar problems, and it was obviously impracticable to cons1der them all. The location of the Laboratory in Melbourne decided the question, owing to its proximity to the immense brown coal deposits of the Latrobe Valley, the exploitation of which was occupying the minds of engineers.
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- 'Mechanical Engineering Prize - 1957 Award', Journal of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, 30 (9) (1958), 290. Details