BMWi BonoKeram

Project Background

According to laws such as „Gesetz für die Erhaltung, Modernisierung und den Aufbau der Kraft-Wärme-Kopplung (KWKG)“ (2002) and „Novelle KWK-Gesetz“ (2009) the federal government plans to Increase the proportion of combined heat and power (CHP) plants in total German gross power-generation from currently approx. 15% to 25% in 2020. In order to achieve this goal, innovations and improvements of this technology are necessary. This resulted in the consortium's idea of operating a CHP plant with a gas turbine instead of conventional combustion engines. One advantage of operating CHP systems with gas turbines is the lower power-to-weight ratio compared to conventional combustion engines. In addition, a gas turbine can be operated flexibly with different fuels. However, the purely electrical efficiency is only in a range of around 25%. Due to this background the focus of the project is to increase the efficiency of gas turbine.

Project Goal

A significant improvement of efficiency is not possible with metallic materials. In contrast, components made from high-performance ceramics can withstand significantly higher temperatures. Therefore, the goal of the project is to develop a rotor and stator made of monolithic high-performance ceramics and their successful use in micro gas turbines (MGT).

Contributions from Fraunhofer SCAI

To accomplish fluidmechanical, structural, hamonical and coupled simulations to optimize and ensure operational stability of the ceramic rotor design.
To develop BoneKeram specific ontology based on the general SCAI Ontology for data management, which are generated by simulation, measurements and materials research.

Project Status and Results

Ceramic turbine wheel optimized regarding static stress and temperature relation
Ceramic turbine efficiancy verified with CFD
Transient flow in turbine simulated
Forced response analysis of ceramic design accomplished
Unbalance analysis of design in progress