Prototyping Self-Sustaining Power Machines with Cascaded Power Units Composed by Pulse Gas Turbines

This research work aims at designing a prototype of a disruptive Self-Sustaining Power Machine (SSPM) composed of cascaded power units (PUs). Each PU consists of a Pulse Gas Turbine (PGT). The prototyping design task involves a singular thermal cycle (sVsVs) associated to each PU, characterized by doing work by: of a Thermal Working Fluid (TWF) due to previous heat addition, contraction of a TWF previously cooled by heat extraction and, upgrading recovered heat by increasing thermal potential by heat superposition techniques, and efficiexpansion ent use of the heat recovered from each upstream PU to feed the first PU downstream. The fact of achieving useful mechanical work with the above-mentioned procedures by adding only heat to produce expansion work, undergoes an excess of useful mechanical work greater than the amount of added heat, which gives rise to a SSPM enabled to defy Perpetual Motion Machines (PMM) of second kind. In the proposed configuration, the heat released from each PU due to the cooling of the TWF is efficiently recovered and reused in the first PU in the cascade. Results have been verified through two case studies carried out on a SSPM simulated prototype, being conducted using air and helium as real gases. According to the results, the SSPM composed by a group of cascaded PUs, each exhibiting an average efficiency of less than 35% with air as TWF, can approach a SSI of 22% while the SSPM composed by a group of cascaded PUs, each exhibiting an average efficiency of less than 57% with helium as TWF, can approach a SSI of 84 %. Consequently, the results achieved from the case studies of the SSPM indicate that it is possible to overcome second kind PMMs.