A novel power-producing concept is disclosed, employing a rotating-plate radial gas
turbine in various gas-
turbine cycle configurations. The “rotating-plate radial gas
turbine” is a rotating
barrel with robust rectangular plates fitted into the
turbine rotor, performing the function and the role of turbine blades, contained within a motionless rigid horizontal cylinder (casing).
Combustion can take place in the spaces confined between adjacent rotating plates and the static cylinder, thus enabling a practical achievement of the
Atkinson cycle (constant-volume heat addition) with improved cycle
thermal efficiency. Alternatively, two or more compressor stages can be combined to feed a single rotating-plate radial gas turbine in cascades, thus gradually increasing pressure of working gas within a volume bordered by adjacent un-cooled rotating plates of the radial gas turbine and the casing. Alternatively, a single compressor may be combined with one or more stages of an
axial turbine for
cascade feeding of a single rotating-plate radial gas turbine. This “isochoric stuffing” effect enables achievement of significantly and even drastically improved gas-turbine-cycle thermal efficiencies. Cycle heat addition may be either isobaric or isochoric in either an open-cycle or a closed-cycle configuration. Using a sufficiently efficient radial gas turbine, it is theoretically possible to obtain 100% cycle
thermal efficiency in a simple radial-gas-turbine configuration with appropriately chosen compressor-stages
compression pressure ratios.