Strategy

HyperGen’s solution is focused on the development of a high efficiency microturbine powertrain to:

• Quickly reduce emissions with existing infrastructure,

• Encourage the adoption of alternative liquid and gas fuels to help balance the energy mixture

• Provide an alternate option whilst electric powertrains continue to develop

 

 

Microturbines have been chosen because they are:

• Mechanically very simplistic and reliable machines, with low maintenance requirements, and may not necessarily require auxiliary equipment to run (lubrication, cooling),

• Great for adapting to different liquid and gas fuels which will help create markets for the adoption of alternative fuels such as hydrogen and biofuels,

• Virtually unmatched in power to weight ratio, which is especially important in the Aerospace Market

• As part of their very high power to weight ratio, they would use a much lower volume of material than competing battery or hydrogen fuel cell options, and the materials used will feature a lot less specialist materials, mainly focused on the combustion chamber and turbines, and generators if they are attached in such a configuration,

• Much cleaner burn than piston engines resulting in significantly lowered NOx, SOx, particulates, etc, such that they may not require exhaust treatment like a catalytic converter even under some of the strictest emissions standards,

• Combustion occurs under constant pressure rather than constant volume and therefore does not need to withstand the peak pressures that require cylinders and pistons of heavy construction as well as high octane fuels, whereas turbine combustion chambers can be more lightly fabricated and use lower octane fuels,

 

• They are a readily scalable solution that can be deployed in many scenarios with very little interference to the consumer or end in terms of the way of life they are used to in possible key metrics relevant to the market such as range, refuelling time, refuelling difficulty, fuel availability, reliability, noise levels, etc,

• Unlike the massive ramp up of Gigafactories for batteries and fuel cells, along with plants for decommissioning the toxic waste from these, microturbines can use largely existing manufacturing lines and recycling plants.

 

 

Microturbines do have some challenges to their competitiveness that need to be addressed:

• They currently have difficulty matching TCO of piston engines due to scale and operational efficiency

• There is a knowledge gap on maintenance, operation, and the key advantages in the market for microturbines,

• They have yet to demonstrate reasonable commercial success beyond static or portable power generation options which is their simplest configuration, or in other niche areas such as hobby engines where fuel inefficiency is not such an issue.