Director of R&T for Rolls-Royce Group Speaks at 2008 IGTI Turbo Expo in Berlin

Prof. Richard Parker, Director of Research and Technology for the Rolls-Royce Group, spoke at the Keynote Session of the ASME Turbo Expo 2008, presented by the International Gas Turbine Institute in mid-June in Berlin, Germany. He presented on the topic of Clean Gas Turbine Technologies for Land, Sea, and Air, elaborating on advances in engineering for the gas turbine engine that help mitigate its effect on the environment.

In an interview about the presentation, Parker pointed out that though it gets a great deal of public attention, aviation produces only 2% of manmade CO2, which is assessed to be roughly the same as the amount caused by use of the Internet worldwide. In the half-century history of jet-powered flight, going back to the Rolls-Royce Avon engine of the 1950s, gas turbine efficiency has improved by 50%. "That's an impressive trend equal to 1% per year," Parker says.

Rolls-Royce is a key partner in the Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE), an industry and stakeholder group that has set voluntary targets to improve on that trend by a further 50% in the years from 2000 to 2020, more than doubling the earlier rate of advancement. Parker says that, "since we will be flying only on carbon-based fuels in that time scale, we've got to reduce the fuel burden by 50%" to meet that goal. The ACARE targets include the 50% reduction of CO2 emissions from aircraft, an 80% reduction of NOx produced by engines, and a reduction of noise produced by aircraft by 50%.

Rolls-Royce's recently released engines "are tracking nicely along the curves for all of those," Parker says. Examples include the Trent 500; the Trent 900, which is now powering the Airbus A380; and the Trent 1000 for the forthcoming Boeing 787 Dreamliner. "They are each achieving their proportion of that new improvement," Parker notes, "particularly with fuel burn and NOx, driving toward those targets." Yet that kind of progress does not come without cost. Each step that is taken follows an injection of new technology made possible by a significant investment. "Last year," Parker says, "Rolls Royce spent $1.7 billion on R&D." At that level of contribution, the company can be reasonably confident in its progress toward the environmentally friendly engine.

Parker cites elements within the gas turbine engine where new technology can be key. In efficiency of components, the latest computational flow dynamics designs are helping make components yet more efficient. In cycle efficiencies, better materials and coatings allow engineers to drive up temperatures and pressures. In propulsion efficiencies, open-rotor propellers are being debated both inside and out of the industry. "There's a prize to be had," Parker says, "of 10% to 15% less fuel burned by an open rotor, but it's noisier." That suggestion fuels a public debate about the tradeoff between the regulation of noise vs. action against global warming. With the latest innovation in aerodynamic design, tomorrow's open-rotor engines could be much quieter than today's aircraft but never as quiet as future designs of an enclosed fan.

In discussing Rolls-Royce technology for use in marine applications, Parker says that Rolls-Royce has had great success with its strategy of "inventing once and using many times". The manufacturer takes successful aerospace gas turbine designs, and with as little change and further investment as possible, converts them for other applications. "Aerospace," Parker says, "by its nature tends to drive cutting-edge technologies." He cites a recent example of successful conversion from aerospace to a marine use as for the Trent 30, which derives from the Trent 800 and has been adopted for two new U.S. ships, the Littoral Combat Ship and the DDG-1000, the latest U.S. battleship.

Using the same "invent once" approach process, Rolls-Royce has developed gas turbine technology for use on land, where regulation is more strict than in the air, particularly for NOx, which now must be reduced to single digits, at 8 or 9 ppb. In industrial gas turbines, the company has changed the combuster to maintain high efficiency levels and reach ever-lower levels of CO2 and carbon monoxide. Using either Dry Low Emissions or Wet Low Emissions technology, designers have lowered NOx emissions and increased power by as much as 50%.

The Rolls Royce Solid-Oxide Fuel Cell is a new product that creates electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen, starting with natural gas (as hydrogen is not readily available in most parts of the world). This unit will be efficient at the 50% to 70% level, with 1 to 10 megawatts of power with a target cost of less than $100 per kilowatt. This product too benefits from advances in gas turbine technology because it is a hybrid. A gas turbine engine in the circuit generates power to pressurize the cell and to burn off unspent fuel.

Parker, in directing research and technology across all of the Rolls-Royce businesses, is confident that the company's new and developing technologies will enable it not only to meet but to beat the ACARE targets of 2020.

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