According to many recent reports, spending and manufacturing output are expected to grow rapidly in Africa by 2025 (McKinsey, Africa mapping new opportunities for sourcing). As a consequence, several market opportunities are expected to be available for different African industries. It is well known that electricity supply is considered one of the most important inputs for any type of industrial or manufacturing developments. The Turbo Green Burner project aims to offer a new product for bakery industries in Africa to produce 12kW of power and 200kW of heat simultaneously using a micro gas turbine engine. The main advantages of this project are the efficiency and flexibility of the proposed system, in addition to its independence from the national grid. Samad Power Ltd, the lead project partner, has developed wide experience in developing micro gas turbine systems for different industrial applications. Samad Power has mastered the Method of Combined Design and developed the world's most cost-effective micro gas turbine CHP system, the Turbo Green Boiler, for the domestic market (£4,000 installed cost). Samad power will utilise its previous experience, methodologies, and registered patents to successfully deliver the Turbo Green Burner system to the market. Cranfield University (CU) is a leading institution with strong experience and a track record in various cutting-edge industrial R&D collaborations on the subjects related to this project including; research, design, and development of gas turbines and turbomachinery equipment. CU will be involved as the academic partner in the Turbo Green Burner project to design and analyse a combustion chamber, which operates with different types of fuels. In particular, CU will support the project during work packages 1 and 2 to design and analyse an efficient combustion chamber that can operate with conventional and environmentally friendly fuels. The combustion chamber will also be designed to burn liquid and gas fuels. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and other numerical and analytical methods will be used to evaluate the combustion chamber performance and to establish its stability maps. To enable the selected engine to operate with different fuels, CU will design different components using inhouse analytical codes, in addition to advanced numerical methods and simulation techniques. Furthermore, the combustion chamber wall temperature will be assessed analytically and numerically to predict all the thermal loads and the appropriate cooling method. The novelty of this design lies on the possibility of the combustion chamber to operate efficiently and effectively using a wide range of fuels available in the market such as methane, diesel, and biofuels.

Potential Impact:
This project is expected to have impacts on the academic, industrial, and public sectors. As an academic impact, the outcomes of this project will be published in international conferences such as Turbo Expo 2020, AIAA 2020, and high-quality journals such as ASME Turbomachinery and Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbine and Power. The publications will present advanced design and analysis approaches, which will enhance the scientific reputation of Cranfield University in gas turbines communities and will benefit many international academic institutions. Turbo Green Burner will improve bakery oven energy efficiency by 40% through utilising the heat demand to generate power (20% fuel saving and 20% on producing more power). The Turbo Green Burner system will also be a relatively cheap product with less than two years return on investment (ROI) time and 50% usage factor. The efficiency improvement of the Turbo Green Burner system, short ROI time, low capital and operation costs are expected to contribute towards offering cheaper baked goods for the general public, in addition to significant financial benefits for the bakery owners, investors, and bakery manufacturers. Turbo Green Burner will be enhanced with a battery pack to makes it grid independent and provide fast response capability to support the grid during peak time. An adaptive control system, which will have the capability to work in unidirectional mode, will be developed in order to simplify the integration into the oven control system. The additional output power from the system, adaptability, compactness, and the capability to run on different fuels (natural gas, diesel, LPG, biogas), make the system a practical option for the remote areas where there are limited electricity supplies and fuels. These specifications are also expected to have positive social and commercial impacts on the general public and business owners. In addition, the possibility of the Turbo Green Burner system to operate with environmentally friendly fuels such as biogas and thus has direct environmental impacts to reducing local pollution and annual CO2 emission. It could also influence the public sector by introducing new policies and legislation regarding the use of bakery systems in different areas such as developing countries. The developed knowledge will be disseminated via journal publications and conference papers, having an impact on industrial gas turbine designers and operators such as Siemens and General Electric.