The National Experimental Turbine (NExT) initiative, located at the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) Steady Thermal Aero Research Turbine (START) Lab and supported by NETL and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for more than a decade, has advanced turbine design to help modernize the nation’s energy infrastructure and lead the way to fewer emissions in the power sector.

“The NExT team has performed the successful integration and operation of additively manufactured, cooled turbine blades at engine-representative conditions,” said NETL’s Patcharin Burke, NExT project manager. “Additive manufacturing provides a faster way, at a relatively lower cost, to develop components that must operate in extreme environments and withstand high temperatures.”

The demonstration was the first of its kind at any U.S. university turbine facility. The partnership responsible for this milestone also included turbine manufacturers Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney, Siemens, and Solar Turbines with the design being completed by Agilis.

“Geometries of most advanced turbine components are highly proprietary,” Burke said. “However, the goal of NExT has always been to provide a modern turbine design that can be used by multiple organizations to advance turbine aerodynamics and cooling.”

The one-stage NExT test turbine with cooled vanes and blades has already garnered interest from industry partners. With the successful integration of NExT into the START rig, both Pratt & Whitney and Solar Turbines have issued research projects using the NExT geometry.

The NExT geometry is also being used by the START Lab to complete projects funded by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aviation Sustainability Center, Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Discussions with the other industry partners on additional unique ways to use the data from NExT are ongoing.

NExT blades have been used to evaluate advanced manufacturing methods in collaborative efforts among Penn State and Honeywell, Hitchiner, and Agilis that include printing the cored mold to enable blades to be cast within two months. This new method is significantly faster and more accurate than conventional tooling methods required for single-crystal blades. Quality checks through scanning quantification indicated that the desired requirements, including aerodynamic shape and internal features, were achieved.

“NETL has a long history collaborating with Penn State and others at the START Lab, including the highly successful NExT initiative,” Burke said. “DOE’s investment in the START facility and the NExT design enables the United States to have an unmatched testing capability for improving cooling designs that will lead to improved turbine performance across the turbine fleet. This is very important in the fight against climate change and in meeting the Administration’s decarbonization goals because even a single-point improvement in U.S. turbine efficiency could add billions of dollars of economic benefit and, in terms of carbon dioxide reduction, is equivalent to removing 2 million cars from the road.”

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that drives innovation and delivers technological solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous energy future. By using its world-class talent and research facilities, NETL is ensuring affordable, abundant, and reliable energy that drives a robust economy and national security, while developing technologies to manage carbon across the full life cycle, enabling environmental sustainability for all Americans.