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One of the things I have always meant to do, and have never had a chance to, is make a functioning gas
turbine engine out of a used turbocharger. However, recently a friend of mine gave me an old KKK tractor
turbocharger, with the words "Can you think of anything to do with this?". My response was a manic giggle,
and the words "You bet I can, thanks.".
I have so far spent about a week building a device (The Wooshmaster 2000 Rotary Blowtorch) for converting
propane into large amounts of heat and noise using this turbo, and the following paragraphs describe the
method and results as of 18/6/97. I must apologise for quality of some of these photos. Unfortunately, the
flash rather overexposed a few of them. I will take some better ones at some point, as well as some detail
shots.

The above photos show the combustion chamber I designed for the engine, assembled on the left, and
disassembled on the right. The chamber consists of the following parts:

1. The base plate, which has the gas inlet, burner nozzle, and swirl vanes attached to it.
2. The flame tube, in which the gas/air mixing happens, and the flame burns.
3. The combustion chamber housing, which directs the air and flame, and contains the other two parts.

As you can see from the photos, the combustion chamber itself is a double skinned affair. The outer skin is
manufactured from a 20cm piece of 14cm diameter tube, with a 1.5cm flange at one end. The other end is
formed by a conical section, made from 1.6mm sheet, which adapts the 14cm tube to the right-angled 5cm
tube which connects to the inlet manifold on the turbo. The inner skin is a 20cm piece of 8cm diameter tube,
concentrically mounted within the outer skin, and tack-welded at three placed to the inner side of the cone.
The air inlet is again a piece of 5cm tubing, mounted tangentially at the front end of the chamber. The flame
tube is a 20cm piece of 32mm tubing, with a number of 9mm holes drilled in it. This is held onto the base
plate by a clamp, to allow easy replacement. The swirl vanes are short bits of 1.6mm sheet, wide enough to
fill the gap between the base plate and the top of the inner combustor liner, and long enough to reach from the
outer skin to the flame tube. All the parts used are stainless steel, and were obtained from a scrap metal
dealer. The flanged outer tube was a lucky find, as is save a lot of time in mounting the base plate. This is held
onto the main unit by 6 M5 bolts.

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Ignition is accomplished by means of a spark plug extending into the inner chamber at the front. This was
eventually tack-welded in position, as I was unable to obtain a suitable nut to fit it.
The entire combustion chamber mounts onto the turbo by means of four M10 bolts. The total cost of the
combustion chamber was about 25 UKP, which included enough extra tubing to make at least two more
similar units.
In operation, the combustion chamber produces a strongly swirling jet of flame, extending about 5cm past the
manifold fitting under full fuel flow. The outer skin of the combustor is insulated and cooled by the incoming
air flow, and stays cool enough to touch for some time in operation. The manifold pipe gets quite hot, but not
as much as might be expected. As you can see, the pipe has discoloured from the heat.
The burner nozzle is currently simply a short bit of 6mm OD steel tube, with the end crimped nearly shut. This
leaves about a 0.5mm slot shaped opening, which produces a fan-shaped jet of gas. The gas inlet fitting is a
1/4" BSP to 6mm compression fitting I had left over from a hydraulic project, which allows new nozzles to
simply be screwed on. The current fuel feed is from a 23Kg LPG bottle via a standard gas heater regulator,
which produces a maximum pressure of 1 bar. The photo below shows the burner in operation, outside the
combustion chamber. The flame,which extends off the top of the picture, is about 80cm long.

The next photo shows the engine completely assembled on its stand, looking at the compressor inlet end. The
stand is made from light duty 25mm mild steel box tubing, again reclaimed from a previous project.

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The small box on the left upright base is the ignition system, which is an old HeNe laser power supply. It
produces about 10kV open-circuit, at a relatively low current. This is enough to jump the gap of the
sparkplug, which was opened out to about 4mm. The plug is mounted with the gap facing across the gas flow,
to get better ignition. The output of the PSU is not of sufficiently high current to be dangerous, although it
doesn't feel very nice!
The small white box on the right upright is the tachometer circuit, which is a simple comparator fed by the
reflective optosensor you can see mounted on the bottom side of the compressor intake. This produces a pulse
every time a blade passes, giving 6 pulses per rev for this turbo. The output of this circuit is fed into a
frequency counter, which produces an output of 1/10 the actual RPM rate. The blades had to be polished to
get a good return signal.
The oil feed inlet tube can be seen at the top of the engine, and the return line is the green hose at the bottom.
The lubricant used is standard hydraulic oil, which has quite a low viscosity. I may change to light sewing
machine oil at some point, though. The oil pump is currently a windshield-washer pump from a scrapped car,
which produces a pressure of about 0.5 bar, at a fairly low flow rate. So far, this seems to work.

This is a picture of the rear of the engine (the hot end). The EGT thermocouple can be seen mounted on a
wire bracket at the bottom of the turbine exhaust. This is a standard type K thermocouple, good to at least
1100 deg. C, which should be ample. I would imagine that the blades would melt before this!
The engine is started with a compressed air jet directed into the compressor from a hand-held nozzle. The

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same nozzle, mounted on a suitable manifold plate, was used to test the turbo bearings after I had cleaned and
rebuilt it. At a fairly high flow rate, the turbine spun up to an estimated 30-40K RPM (this was before I fitted
the tacho), and produced the most incredible noise I have ever heard from something so small. It sounded
almost exactly like a Harrier on hover at close range. Even with ear defenders on, the noise is deafening, and
a friend of mine heard it from about 1/4 of a mile away. Under its own power, though, the engine is
disappointingly quiet.
I have found the correct procedure for starting the engine to be as follows:

1. Turn on the ignition

2. Turn on the oil feed briefly to get the bearing lubricated, and spin the turbine a few times by hand to
distribute the oil.
3. Spin up the turbine with a 1-2 second burst of air, to about 3000 rpm
4. Carefully open the propane valve. The burner ignites with a loud thud, and a burst of flame comes out
of the turbine.
5. With the fuel valve open about 1/6 of the way, spin up the turbine to maximum revs with the
compressed air. This is about 12000 RPM.
6. Now slowly open the fuel valve, until the turbine starts to accelerate under its own steam. The speed
increase can be clearly heard. The air jet is now turned off.
7. Turn on the oil pump.
If the above sequence is followed, the engine can be started and brought up to idle speed reliably within about
10 seconds. I found out the hard way the importance of only turning on the fuel flow at quite low speeds. If
the turbine is spun up to full speed before the fuel is turned on, the air flow is so high that a lot of gas is
needed to produce a flammable mixture. When it finally ignites, the bang rattles the windows, and nearly gave
me heart failure. Once was enough!
In operation, the turbine idles at about 18000 RPM, and runs up to at least 60000 RPM under full fuel flow.
At full power, it produces enough thrust to push the whole assembly slowly across the floor. I have not yet
build a thrust measuring system, so I don't have numbers. The turbine makes relatively little noise, sounding
much like a large gas furnace, with a whine overlaid on it. It runs rather hot, due to non-optimal burner
design, which is something I am still fiddling with. I hope to cure this before I completely bugger up the turbo.
The turbine casing gets smoking hot within about 15 seconds, but is made of metal so thick it can take care of
itself. The turbine blades, however, glow a bit, and I am not happy with this.
Measurements of the performance of this turbine showed some interesting results. The temperature of the
exhaust gas when the engine is running as a constant speed is about 590 deg. C, regardless of the actual
engine speed. While accelerating, the EGT peaks at about 870 deg. C, and while decelerating, the EGT goes
down to about 480 deg. C, presumably from the excess air going through the turbine. The turbine blades glow
brightly during the acceleration phase, but only dimly during steady running. The turbine accelerates rapidly
from idle when the fuel valve is opened fully, initially producing a 10-15cm exhaust flame, and an odd
crackling noise. As the speed picks up, and the excess fuel proportion drops, the flame shrinks and finally
disappears inside the turbine housing. At a fuel flow of 1 bar through the current burner design, the maximum
full power speed is at least 60000 RPM. I don't currently know what the ultimate speed is, for two reasons.
One is that the current tacho circuit stops working reliably above this speed (a problem I am addressing at the
moment), and the other is that I didn't have the guts to leave the valve fully open until the speed stabilised!
So far, the engine has accumulated about an hour of running time, with the longest sustained run being about
8-10 minutes. I have run is for periods of about 5 minutes at a go at idle speeds, and it runs very smoothly.

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I have tried a less restricted gas nozzle, with mixed results. The thing definitely ran faster, but at full flow
produced a rather odd result. The turbine began what can only be described as backfiring, at about 5-10 Hz.
This produces a harsh buzzing effect, with a series of flashes of flame out of the turbine. I assume this was
due to the fuel flow being too high for the air flow to keep up with, producing a mixture with an excess of gas
in it. This mixture would not burn properly until it was diluted with external air after it had been expelled
from the turbine, whereupon the heat of the exhaust would ignite it. The resulting explosion compression
wave would feed back into the combustion chamber, igniting the mixture inside. This would then go out due
to lack of oxygen, and the cycle would repeat. At least, this seems feasible. The cure would seem to be either
restricting the gas flow (this definitely works), or increasing the air flow for a given RPM rate, which would
require a turbo with a larger compressor. I may try this at some point.
Unfortunately, this turbocharger is definitely on the way out. The bearings are quite worn, and there is about
1mm or so of radial and axial free play in them. This does not seem to affect the operation of the engine, but
it leaks oil like mad. I will have to replace it at some point. When I do, I am tempted to sacrifice this turbo in
the interests of science, by running it up in speed until it eventually fails, and videoing the results, as well as
recording the thrust, final speed and EGT, etc. Obviously, I will only do this if I can arrange for it to happen in
a safe fashion, preferably on the other side of a very thick wall.

There are a number of additions I want to try. One is a fuel system that runs on vaporised diesel fuel, which
would save a lot of space, and also be cheaper to run. Another is to make starting and running automatic,
under control of an engine management system. The electronics and software are no problem, but the electric
valves required for the fuel and air are rather expensive. This will have to wait until I can find some
secondhand.
Another mod I intend to try is water injection. I plan on injecting a spray of water into the end of the
combustion chamber, well before the entry to the turbine inlet manifold. In theory, the water would vaporise,
absorbing a lot of heat (thereby cooling the turbine inlet gas, and hence reducing the stress on the turbine
blades), and simultaneously increasing the mass flow through the turbine. This should more than offset the
higher density of the cooler gas, which would tend to reduce the mass flow, assuming I can inject the correct
amount of water. The downside is a bit more complexity, and probably faster corrosion of the turbine blades.
The upside is more thrust, and cooler running. This is, of course, if it works at all. It would probably also
produce a nice visible exhaust, and possible quite a bit more noise.
I will update this page with the results of further experimentation, as time allows.
Back to the beginning of turbines. Back

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