The word "turbine" is associated with spinning.  It is derived from the Latin word for a spinning top "turbines".

The turbine traces its history back to Hero of Alexandria who in AD 62 demonstrated a device he name Aeolipile.  It did not produce useful work bit it did demonstrate the result of accelerating a gaseous fluid thru nozzle causing the sphere to rotate.

The development of the gas turbine depended upon the prior development of many devices including smoke jacks (first described by Leonardo da Vince), windmills, water wheels and steam turbines.  Of particular significance in the development of the gas turbine were those technologies associated with the development of efficient compressors and improved materials that could withstand the high temperatures required for gas turbines.

The first patent issued for a gas turbine was issued in 1791 to John Barber, an Englishman.  The principle of operation of this gas turbine required that air and fuel from a gas producer be compressed in different cylinders and then directed into a combustion chamber where the fuel was burned.  The products of combustion were then caused to flow through a nozzle onto a turbine wheel.  John Barber’s concept was sound, but given the technology of that day, it was not possible for the device to create sufficient power to both compress the air and the gas and to have power left over to provide useful work.  Nevertheless, the credit for the idea that leads to the modern gas turbine can clearly be give to John Barber.  In spite of the fact that John Barber’s 1791 patent represented all of the important features of a successful gas turbine it wasn’t until the early part of the 20^th century that engineers were able to produce a machine that was useful. 

To make the gas turbine useful it was necessary to solve 2 primary technological hurdles.  The first was materials and the second compressors.  First, it wasn’t until the development of cobalt and nickel base super alloys allowed sufficiently high turbine inlet temperatures before the thermodynamics of the Braton Cycle could be improved to the point of providing useful work at a reasonable efficiency.  Second, the fundamental nature of the gas turbine Braton Cycle is that the compressor work represents a large percentage of the available turbine work.  For this reason the compressor efficiency needs to be quite good.  It wasn’t until the early part of the 20^th century that the aerodynamic of compressor as well enough understood and worked out in a practical nature to allow compressors of sufficiently high efficiency to be applied to gas turbines.  Even today, the best of gas turbines require approximately 50 percent of the turbine work to drive the compressor.

In 1873 Franz Stolze, a German, produced a preliminary design for a “Fire Turbine”.  There was no patent office in Germany so he couldn’t patent his idea.  A prototype was assembled in Berlin in 1904.  It is not known if this prototype machine ran successfully.  Stolze’s design incorporated a 10-stage axial flow compressor with a 15-stage axial flow turbine.  Air from the compressor was directed to a “U” tube heat exchanger, where it was supposed to volatilize coal, and then to a single combustor to burn the volatizer fuel.  The firing temperature of Stolze’s turbine was approximately 750°F.

At the same time that Stolze was conceiving his gas turbine the 1870’s, George Brayton, an American, built a successful gas engine based on a cycle that was composed of two reversible constant pressure processes and two adiabatic processes.  While Brayton’s engine was a reciprocating engine, his cycle is the basis of the gas turbine cycle we know today. 

In 1882 the Norwegian Adgidius Elling started the construction of a gas turbine with possessed a 6 stage centrifugal compressor.  This turbine in 1903 produced 11 horsepower.  In 1904 Elling built another gas turbine wherein the air was heated by the turbine exhaust gases through a heat exchanger.  This regenerative gas turbine produced an output of 44 horsepower.  Little is know neither about these gas turbines nor about further developments by Elling.

By the late 1800’s the idea of using turbines in practical applications had taken hold.  Charles G. Curtis, who patented a velocity staged steam turbine in 1896 and after further development sold all right of this design to the General Electric Company in 1901 for 1.5 million dollars, a pricey sum in that day.  Curtis also obtained the first American patent of a gas turbine in 1895.

The first truly practical gas turbine, and one which received much attention in its day, appears to have been developed by the Armengaud Brother of Paris France.  This gas turbine was based on a patent granted to Charles Lemale in 1901 in France.  The gas turbine was ultimately produced in 1905 and 1906.  It utilized a 25 stage centrifugal compressor, built by Brown Boveri and Company, and had a pressure ratio of 3 to 1.  The combustion chamber used a carborundum lining and hence started the application of ceramics in gas turbines.  The turbine wheel and buckets were water cooled, depending on differences in density between hot and cold water to provide the circulation of the water.  Between the combustor and turbine was a 16.5-foot long pipe in which water was injected into the gas stream in order to reduce the combustion gas temperature to something below 850°F before entering the turbine buckets.  Only a portion of the air compressed by the compressor was used in combustion and to drive the turbine.  The remainder of the air was supplied to Paris air mains for service in the city.  Stodola performed an analysis of the efficiency of Armengaud’s turbine and concluded it was barely 3 percent and the useful turbine output some 82 horsepower.

Of particular interest is the development of another gas turbine by the Armengaud Brother’s that had a very unique feature.  The gases from the combustor flowed through the turbine and then through a heat exchanger that produced steam that was again directed through the same turbine wheel.

Another gas turbine development of historical significance was that of Hans Holzwarth of Germany who began a series of experiments in 1905.  Holzwarth’s design is significant in that it depended on an explosion of the fuel air mixture in order to generate sufficient pressure rise to derive useful work from the turbine.  In the Holzwarth design air at very low pressure of some 30 to 40 psig was used to scavenge the turbine combustor in which fuel was subsequently sprayed and allowed to burn raising the pressure to some 170 to 200 psig.  This elevated pressure opened a valve that allowed the high pressure and hot gas to expand through the turbine.  Turbines based on this principle were produced with outputs up to 20 megawatts.

It wasn’t until the 1930’s that the practical gas turbine as we know today began to be placed into commercial service.  These gas turbines were largely the development of Brown Boveri and Company in Switzerland and intended to be an offshoot of their development of the Velox boilers.  These boilers depended on a super charged combustion chamber in order to improve heat transfer.  In 1936 Henry Thomas of the Sun Oil Company of Philadelphia was in the process of developing the Houdry Cracking process for oil refineries.  He concluded that applying super chargers in the process in order to burn carbon residues could result in the production of power that could then be applied in the refineries.  He approached Brown Boveri and Company who was willing to adapt there axial flow compressors from the Veloxs boiler to this process.  During the shop testing of the compressor and turbine sets it was necessary fro Brown Boveri to provide a combustion chamber in order to simulate the heat of the carbon burning process within the Houdry process.  With this setup in their erection shops, Brown Boveri realized that the compressor, combustor, and turbine provided for a workable gas turbine which could be turned to power production.  This led Brown Boveri to produce a gas turbine that was installed at Neuchatel in Switzerland for stand by service in a bomb proof installation in 1939.  This gas turbine had an output of 4 megawatts with a turbine inlet temperature of approximately 1020°F.  In 1942 Brown Boveri installed a 2200 horsepower gas turbine on a locomotive for the Swiss Railway Service.  Within 10 years there were 43 manufactures producing gas turbines of a variety of designs and being placed in a variety of services. 

One of the more interesting gas turbine concepts that have been tried over the years is that patented in 1939 by Heppner.  This gas turbine possesses a centrifugal compressor with a rotating diffuser that is directly coupled to the output shaft.  The double flow axial turbine drives the double flow radial compressor only.  The rotating diffuser then provides the power output.  One of the interesting features of this design is that as the output shaft is caused to slow by an increase in load, the pressure ratio on the compressor increases thus increasing the torque on the output shaft.  This was a tricky design to calculate and it never saw success commercially. 

Up to this point I have discussed the development of gas turbine for power for earth bound machines. 

To be continued.....