Sentinel Staff Writer

September 1, 2009

A trio of UCF scientists has been awarded $811,186 by the U.S. Department of Energy to invent a tiny-but-tough device that could help solve global warming and reduce energy consumption.

All that the three professors have to do is devise a thermometer that can survive for years inside what amounts to a blowtorch.

More precisely, Xun Gong and two colleagues, along with support from a UCF corporate neighbor, Siemens Energy, hope to develop a temperature sensor for use in power plants that run on natural gas to generate electricity.

They are designing a device that can function within the hottest part of a power plant's combustion-turbine engine, a fire-breathing machine much like an airplane jet engine.

Temperatures reach a steel-melting 2,700 degrees, pressures are extreme and the environment is highly corrosive. It's harsh enough to vaporize not only a thermometer but any connecting wires.

"Right now there are no sensors able to work in a combustion chamber, to be honest," Gong said. "There are materials that could survive, but the trick is finding one that will function as a sensor."

For utilities and makers of combustion-turbine engines - including Siemens - getting a precise read on combustion temperature is a big deal. For now, they essentially look at sensors elsewhere in a turbine engine and make a conservative estimate about the combustion-chamber temperature.

"Along with that conservatism comes a backing down, a lowering of a rate, an adding of safety factors, and all that stacks up," said Paul Zombo, a Siemens Energy service support engineering manager in Orlando. "In our space, measurements that are a fraction of a percent in terms of efficiency mean millions of dollars."

In a sense, the UCF scientists are trying to make something akin to a better speedometer that would enable power-plant operators to push their machines closer to the most efficient speed - or temperature in this case. The reward is not just in dollars.

"For every percentage-point improvement in a gas-turbine engine, you're talking about reducing CO2 [climate-changing carbon dioxide] emissions thousands of tons," said Vinod Philip, a Siemens Energy materials-and-technology director in Orlando. "That is a clear environmental reason to push this technology to the limit."

Advanced-sensor development was the kind of research Siemens was hoping for last year when it opened the Siemens Energy Center on the UCF campus. For Siemens, a big plus of working with the university is its wide variety of experts.

The temperature-sensor design calls for a heat-resistant ceramic being perfected by UCF materials scientist Linan An. The ceramic will be machined into a device less than a quarter inch wide by UCF mechanical engineer Chengying Xu.

An electrical engineer, Gong is in charge of the overall design, which will include an ability to emit a wireless, microwave temperature signal that can be detected outside the combustion chamber. It's a three-year project.

"Based on our experience and based on our previous results, we do have high confidence we will succeed," Gong said.