Development of turbomachines for renewable energy systems and energy-saving applications

Turbomachines play a significant role in some key sectors as aircraft and marine propulsion, power production, heat ventilation and air conditioning and chemical processing. The success of dynamic machines is connected to the wide variety of demands that they can cover, together with their compactness, reliability and availability. In this respect, such machines are the favourite candidate to support an efficient exploitation of some renewable energy sources and the development of energy-saving systems. Innovative plants require machines which can work with new fluids (e.g. Organic Rankine Cycle systems) or in new operating conditions (e.g. high-flexibility or new pressure ratios) and it poses new challenging aspects in the preliminary machinery design. Moreover, another challenging aspect is how innovative techniques (e.g. high-integrated design systems, 3D printing) can be integrated in the design process and how much they can affect the machine development and final performance. Two case studies are presented to focus the attention on such aspects, discussing preliminary design and prototyping of “unconventional” turbomachines.