The future for gas turbines

Toyota was working on gas turbine/hybrid-drive vehicles back in the 1970s. That much was revealed to us at the recent Environment and Technology conference (more here) during a presentation by Toyota's senior executive director of sales and marketing, Dave Buttner, when he touched on a concept car unveiled back in 1977. The Hybrid Sports 800 combined an electric motor with a gas-turbine engine.

Whatever happened to the gas turbine car, we here at the Carsales Network wondered? It was reportedly smooth and powerful, but expensive to build and generated a lot of heat, as well as using almost as much fuel to idle as to run at full power.

The gas turbine engine will run on almost any fluid that can combust, making it an ideal range extender for a series hybrid such as General Motors' Chevrolet Volt (more here) or Toyota's own plug-in Prius -- you would think. There's one other issue that stands in the way of the gas turbine adopting the mantle of engine of the future. It emits a lot of CO2...

"[Gas turbine engines] could burn just about anything, but not particularly efficiently," says Peter Evans, Toyota's Corporate Manager Product Planning.

"I don't think they'd heard of CO2 back in the 60s and early 70s when they were looking at gas-turbines, 'cause remember, the oil shocks in the 70s were all about the oil supply running out -- we've got to burn something else. That, I think was the primary driver for gas turbines, as opposed to CO2 being the driver..."

Nonetheless, the power-generation industry is currently looking into the development of hydrogen-fuelled gas turbines to generate electricity (pictured), so whilst the gas turbine is probably not a practical aspect for personal transport, if we can develop the broader infrastructure to support hydrogen resupply, that's a (carbon-free) fuel that could reduce CO2 emissions considerably.

Power generation as an industry is the major emitter of CO2 in this country, according to the federal government (more here). Agriculture accounts for 16 per cent of CO2 emissions and road transport 14 per cent, but 'stationary energy' (power generation) accounts for a staggering 50 per cent.

So, ridding Victoria's brown coal-fired generators in favour of hydrogen-fuelled gas turbines would reduce carbon emissions by a massive amount, almost overnight. Of course, that's all dependent on finding a cheap and easy means of producing hydrogen in situ.

And if hydrogen can fuel power generators, it can do the same for jet airliners too.

Some months ago, technologists at Monash University -- with tongue in cheek -- suggested the private car should be banned (more here).

"But that doesn't help..." says Peter Evans.

"Halve the amount of car emissions and you save seven per cent [of the total CO2 load in Australia]. The transport solution is only one piece of the puzzle.

"[The Monash press release makes for] a good headline... How about 'We have to ban electricity'?" Evans suggests, with his own tongue in cheek.

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