Cross Flow Air Turbine (CFAT) Auxiliary Power Unit by AirMach Innovations
 Ashley Pilipiszyn May 11, 2016 06:29  | Fantastic job! This is a very interesting proposal that has multiple benefits highlighted: between the noise pollution reduction, the reduction in GHG emissions, low maintenance costs, and fuel use reduction. I think there is a lot of potential with the Cross Flow Air Turbine - it would be interesting if you could provide any information on similar air turbines and what has worked and what hasn't or any available case studies. It would also very useful if you could provide an illustration of the current prototype to understand visually the comparison to current turbines. |
 Onkar Kulkarni May 11, 2016 11:38  | Proposal contributor Thank you for appreciation. Currently there are no such air turbines to replace current APUs on aircrafts but RAT (Ram Air Turbines) are used on various aircrafts to provide emergency power and pressure. But these RATs can not be deployed for whole duration of flight because they produce lot of drag as they are have a shape of conventional wind turbines. What we are trying to propose and develop is an air turbine which can be operated in cruise flight to produce power and storage. We are still researching and developing our CFAT project and soon we will update on that too. Visuals are also coming soon. Please suggest more view. Thank you again. |
 Saurabh Deshmukh May 12, 2016 11:58  | Proposal contributor Cross Flow turbines currently are use in generation of hydroelectric power and to generate lift in some UAVs (FanWing). We are working on different aspect of it where we design a generator mounted concentrically inside the cross flow fan which makes assembly to use minimum space to give maximum performance. |
 Joe Abraham Jul 13, 2016 06:11 | Energy to power the CFAT must come at the expense of propulsion power (i.e. ultimately the main engines are the source of power for the CFAT during cruise flight). I would expect that the fuel efficiency of the main engines at cruise is far better than an APU, so there is likely some savings resulting from the use of CFAT. Please quantify these savings. It is not as simple as saying that there will be no APU, so no fuel is burned.
Please also consider that generators and compressors can (and are) installed integral with the main engines and this is a very reasonable alternative.
Finally, you should address a typical use of APU to air condition the aircraft that is waiting on a hot tarmac. It is very doubtful that batteries can serve this purpose. |
Saurabh Deshmukh Jul 15, 2016 12:58 | Proposal contributor Thank you for the input @fuzzy.joe. Firstly, CFAT will not use any power from main engines to run at cruise flight. It will run by the action of passing high velocity, rotating cross flow fan. This contest is intended to propose greener and innovative technologies. Your reasonal alternative is good but may not be suitable for this contest. We work on that option too. I can understand your concern for the APU to use on hot tarmac but we have mentioned in our proposal that CFAT is in its ideation stage and more study and development is needed. Stay tuned! more clarification is on its way. |
 Dimoir Quaw Jul 31, 2016 09:15 | Hello Onkar and Saurabh, I have voted for your proposal. It has much overlap with my own proposal https://www.climatecolab.org/contests/2016/energy-supply/c/proposal/1316801 My proposal utilises gas turbines driven by gas whose heat was not necessarily derived from combustion. The burning process is not used; however hot gas produced by a special process (please refer to proposal https://www.climatecolab.org/contests/2016/energy-supply/c/proposal/1316801) will drive the turbine, and rotate its shaft for work. Unique fluid flow through the turbine and fluid injection into the turbine is therefore considered. If the overlapping topics are agreeable to you, please vote for my proposal... Best Regards, Dimoir |
