THE GAS TURBINE IS BACK?

August 11, 2010 Vol. 6, No. 17

Seasonal yo-yo routines continue on the truck sales front, same with trailers, and we’re still a long way off the levels we saw a few years back, but life marches on everywhere I look. The technology race continues unabated, driven partly by safety and efficiency priorities but mostly, of course, by the urgent wish to defend against the high cost of fuel and/or the ultimate disappearance of diesel. The latter’s not going to happen any time soon, I promise you, and most present projections see fuel prices staying relatively stable for some time to come. Yeah, but we all know how little it takes to knock that train off its track.

Want a hopeful sign? Here’s a good one: some truck-making plants both here and in Europe are recalling workers who were laid off many months ago. Volvo, for example, is about to recall 270 people to the New River Valley assembly plant. Some others are doing the same.

And overseas, Scania says it’s “recruiting 500 new employees at its European production units to deal with the increased production rate planned for the fourth quarter of 2010.” Note “recruiting” and “new”… not “recalling” and “previously laid-off.” Interesting, especially as they hired 500 bodies just a couple of months ago as well. The thing is, these new workers aren’t going to be filling European demand. Truck and trailer sales there remain in the doldrums; this is all about business elsewhere in the world like Asia and South America. See
www.scania.com.

MORE LOCALLY, NORTH AMERICAN CLASS 8 truck sales were up a solid 27% in July, compared to the same month last year, but were also down 27% from June 2010. That’s a normal seasonal loss that happens every summer. So says ACT Research, which noted even better news on the class 5-7 midrange front — a 100% gain over July ’09.

ACT also has good news to report on the U.S. trailer scene, where July commercial trailer orders were 74% better than July of 2009. Frankly, that’s not saying too much, because ACT partner and senior analyst Kenny Vieth notes that last year “was one of the worst years” ever. Dry vans did best, up 134% year over year. I don’t believe Canadian trailers are represented in ACT research.

Vieth adds, incidentally, that net truck and trailer orders “have yet to reach normal replacement levels.”

Still, it’s good news, and such order increases naturally fuel the research-and-development efforts we love to see. There’s only so much public money to spread around, after all.

Speaking of new technology…

HOW ABOUT A GAS TURBINE ENGINE? Yep, it’s back. Sort of. Now, the last one I saw — the only one I’ve ever seen in a truck — was in a Kenworth cabover sitting forlornly in the background at the Eaton proving grounds in Marshall, Michigan. It sat there for years, if I remember correctly, evidence of a technology that once looked good but didn’t make the cut. The test pilots there told me the thing sucked fuel like a turbo sucks air, so it was abandoned.

But I recently came across a Florida company called Turbine Truck Engines that wants to build what it calls a Detonation Cycle Gas Turbine (DCGT) engine for use in heavy trucks in North America and elsewhere. And they have a joint-venture agreement with a Chinese company called Beijing Royal Aerospace Facilities Co. to develop and build it. Nothing actually royal about the Chinese outfit, by the way, not least because Chairman Mao would have disapproved rather strongly.

Anyway, they’re now working out the details for the design and construction of the next-generation prototype of this motor, which will use natural gas as its fuel source and will be manufactured in China. They figure they’ll have an engine built and ready to test by June, 2011.

The Florida folks say the engine can actually use any fuel that can be gasified (gasoline, diesel, propane, natural gas, hydrogen, methanol, ethanol or LPG) or a fuel mixture of some sort, yet needs little or no coolant, lube oil, filters, or pumps.

“Its unique, lightweight turbine design has few moving parts, significantly reducing maintenance costs. The innovative cyclic detonation process produces a near-complete combustion of fuel-oxidizer mixtures, resulting in greater fuel economy and fewer harmful exhaust emissions,” says TTE.

Here’s the company’s explanation of the power-making process:

“A DCGT engine includes a turbine rotor contained within a housing. Exhaust ports of respective valveless combustion chambers located on opposite sides of the rotor direct combustion gasses towards the turbine, which operates in similar fashion to a Pelton water wheel.”

[I had to look that one up, and if you didn’t, I’m impressed. A Pelton wheel, simply enough, is a turbine that harnesses the momentum of rushing water rather than its weight. It’s the most efficient water turbine as a result. The TTE turbine wheel is pictured here.]