Ingersoll Rand

The Ingersoll Rand microturbine is built to Ingersoll Rand’s tough industrial-quality standards. The engines have been designed to provide reliability, long life, and high performance demanded by businesses today and expected by IR customers. At the core of the system is a rugged, turbocharger-based design using industrial-quality components. Under typical around-the-clock operating conditions, the entire system is designed to achieve a useful life of 80,000 hours (or approximately 10 years).

And the IR microturbine is extremely clean, producing NOx emissions below 5 ppm. The microturbine is also quiet with noise levels below 78 dbA measured at one meter.

The IR Cogeneration package uses the power turbine to drive a conventional induction generator to produce electricity. Waste heat, available at nominally 400°F, can be captured as hot water.

The novel heat recovery system is completely packaged within the engine enclosure and requires no dump radiator to maintain operation through extended periods when no thermal load is present. The all-enclosed package is designed for quick and efficient installation in a wide range of commercial and industrial environments.

MT70 kW	MT250 kW

Specifications

Models

The MT70 is an induction generator unit designed for grid-parallel operations.

The MT250 series can operate grid-parallel or grid-isolated.

Emissions

NOx <9ppmv @ 15% O2, <0.15 lbm/MWh
CO <9ppmv @15% O2, <0.5 lbm/MWh

MT70 is CARB 2003 certified
MT250 is CARB 2007 certified

The Recuperator

A recuperator for a gas-turbine engine is a type of heat exchanger that preheats the compressor discharge air using waste heat from the engine exhaust. By recovering exhaust heat and putting it back into the engine prior to the combustor, much less fuel is needed to sustain the turbine operating temperature. But, recuperators operate in a hostile environment and are subject to constantly varying thermal stresses that reduce performance and shorten useful life.

Originally IR Energy Systems planned to find and adapt an existing recuperator to work with the IR engine. Considering all the recuperators currently available, IR Energy Systems purchased and tested each manufacturer's technology and design, but they all failed some significant criteria. In every instance, the IR specifications called for significant improvements in existing recuperator efficiency, durability, size, or cost. Since there was no practical way to overcome all of these design deficiencies in any single commercially available unit, IR Energy Systems decided to develop its own improved recuperator technology.

The successful result is a unique evolutionary design that takes advantage of the strengths of other manufacturer’s recuperators while overcoming their inherent weaknesses. The IR recuperator has been engineered with the design latitude of a conventional plate-fin heat exchanger and the ability to vary the size to meet performance requirements. To overcome the durability and fatigue problems of conventional plate-fin designs, the unique construction of the IR recuperator core provides exceptionally long life even under the harshest thermal transients. That same unique construction also gives the IR recuperator an easily variable stack height that allows the design to be readily adapted to different engines.

Structurally, the design behaves more like a primary-surface type recuperator with its associated higher durability but without its inherent deficiencies. The IR recuperator has greater flexibility to fit a wider range of applications and does not suffer from "creep" problems. In addressing all of IR Energy Systems own criteria for developing the recuperator, it became obvious that the new design was clearly responding to the same concerns for performance, durability, and cost that other OEM's were looking for.

PDF Literature

IR 70L Spec Sheet
IR 250 kW Series Brochure

More Information

Ingersoll Rand
800-D Beaty Street
Davidson, NC 28036

Telephone: 1-877 IR POWER or 704-896-5373
Fax: 704-896-4327

Go to the IR web site at www.irenergysystems.com

Source: IR Energy Systems web site and literature, 7/2002; updated 6/2004; updated 8/2006