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W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 13 F E B R UA R Y 2 3 , 2 0 1 5 e idea, Stapp says, is for municipal- ities to own their transmission systems and use a Peregrine Turbine system to generate electricity and avoid transmis- sion and delivery costs. Such delivery costs can make up half of an electric bill. For example, a recent residential bill from this writer totaled . for kilowatt hours of electricity, with . of that going toward the delivery charge and . to the Standard Offer Service electricity supply. Stapp is now talking to potential first installations for the technology, includ- ing Brunswick Landing and Wright- Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. In addition, the company is considering getting space in Brunswick Landing, because there is a jet engine test cell there that it intends to use. Kristine Schuman, business devel- opment coordinator for the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, became familiar with the Peregrine Engine in her former role as a governor's account executive in the Department of Economic and Community Development. While she says she can- not comment on any possible use of the company's system at Brunswick Landing, she says, "e technology they have is going to be something big. It has multiple uses and could be a break- through for energy power generation and different applications." Old technology, new use e Peregrine Engine combines an open gas generator with a closed cycle turbine that uses super critical carbon dioxide, or SCO, an organic solvent that is commonly used to decaffeinate coffee. Stapp says the power generation indus- try has been interested in using SCO to improve engine efficiency, which has hovered around to in the air- craft industry for several decades. "So we didn't invent the idea of using this in an engine," he says. "e problem is that others couldn't figure out how to use any air-combustible fuel as the heat source. We figured out a thermodynamic cycle that would per- mit us to do it." at means capturing heat from air-combustible fuels like natural gas to improve the efficiency of the turbine. Stapp says the Peregrine Engine's efficiencies should be around , based on its analytical models. Doody of Mid-South Engineering said an engineering physicist on staff who has worked in the power industry his whole career created engineering models that replicated the efficiencies Peregrine Technologies is claiming. "One of our guys did a lot of research and found SCO technology has been around, but it was how they configured the system that was differ- ent," he says. "Getting the first system running is the challenge, technically and financially, but finding sites to install distributed energy systems will be relatively easy." Mid-South will also work to attach the Peregrine Engine to existing energy infrastructure, such as adding electri- cal transformers and heat exchangers to make a complete local power plant. Doody adds that many munici- palities would like to have their open transmission systems to run electric- ity, as would industrial parks. He adds that the cost of the system is not yet set, but it should not be that different compared to traditional systems. Peregrine Technologies also has drawn interest from military com- plexes, which want a sustainable energy source. "e Air Force is interested in our technology as a power generator," says Stapp. "ere is a thrust in the military for base energy security." Better fuel efciency e origin of the Peregrine Engine traces back to , when Stapp started working on advanced concepts for aircraft engines, with an eye towards improving their fuel efficiency. "ough it's a wonderful machine that's capable of producing lots of power in a small, lightweight package, a turbine engine is not known for fuel efficiency," he says. "In an age where the cost of fuel is so high and where the sensitivity to emis- sions is so high, as an engineer I thought the time had come for someone to do some serious groundbreaking work." He says the inefficiency has to do with the ability of a heat engine to con- vert heat into mechanical power. Every engine currently used for transportation takes heat and converts it into mechani- cal power. e efficiency with which a machine does that conversion largely depends on the temperature after com- bustion, the temperature of the exhaust and the difference between the two, he says. e thermodynamic cycle deter- mines how much chemical energy in the fuel gets converted to mechanical energy, and how much of it gets turned into waste heat exhaust. Not much has changed in turbine engine technology since the s, Stapp says, and the technology is so mature that any incremental improve- ments are very difficult and expensive. With efficiencies averaging , that means the other two-thirds of the fuel that the engine burns is wasted. HARRIMAN.COM AUBURN PORTLAND MANCHESTER Find us on ARCHITECTURE ENGINEERING SUSTAINABLE DESIGN PLANNING INTERIOR DESIGN Cary Medical Center, Women's Imaging Center © Blind Dog Photography www.bhbt.com • 888-853-7100 Local decisions, flexible solutions and personalized service, the way banking should be… since 1887. your business banking team Left to right: Faye Allen, Steve Gurin, Greg Dalton, Wendy Luce, Adam Robertson, Tim Tunney, Sam McGee, Jim Lacasse, Chris Perry, Todd Starbird, Scott Shields, Leita Zeugner and Vicki Hall. C O N T I N U E D O N F O L L OW I N G PA G E »

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