Used Microturbines

Microturbines For Sale

Comparison Chart

Feasibility Study

Model Chart

Upgrades

Brochures and Manuals

Global Micro Wind Turbine

Waste Heat Generator

Geothermal Powerplant

INFINITY ORC TURBINE

Microturbine Basics:

Microturbines are basically compact gas turbine generators. They are similar in nature to the APU (aux power unit found in and supporting aircraft ground operations).

They produce power which is either grid-connected or stand-alone. 

An alternative to the Capstone Microturbine is the new Global Energy Organic Rankine Cycle Infinity Turbine.

Microturbines have the unique ability to produce electricity and heat simultaneously. When both of these products are used, it is called cogeneration. Cogen is now being implemented in Green Buildings, as well as greenhouses, apartment buildlings, condos, supermarkets, pools, spas, and just about anywhere you need hot water and electricity.

Most microturbine's operate on natural gas, propane, or diesel. If you install a heat exchanger off the back end (turbine exhaust) of the microturbine, you can claim a portion of the heat for hot water, chillers, and other devices.

A Microturbine Running on Vegetable Oil ?

You can also run a microturbine on vegetable oil when heated to approximately 140-160 deg. F.(however it’s still experimental since there have been few duration tests.)  Microturbines have been run on straight vegetable oil, waste vegetable oil (filtered).  One German group ran a Capstone on Canola Oil. (see report here)

What's on the Horizon for Microturbines

(April 10, 2008)

Organic Rankine Cycle Turbine Generators:

Global Energy has started a new line of power generation equipment based on using waste heat from industrial sources, including large gas turbine gen sets, diesel gen sets, solar and geothermal.  Based on the organic Rankine cycle, heat can now be used to make power.

An Alternative to the Capstone Microturbine:

Our system has built-in features that customers have been asking for in the past 5 years.

Shaft Horsepower: You can generate power via a generator, or power a pump.

Container Mounted: Systems mounted in a standard 20 or 40 ft shipping container.

Ease of Maintenance: Any refrigeration technician can service units.

Hot Weather Performance Boost: Our systems are not effected by high ambient temperatures. Capstones have a huge power decrease above 100 deg F.

Any Fuel: Natural Gas, propane, solar, digester, landfill gas, geothermal, hot water, steam, waste heat. Low pressure gas ? No problem.  No compressor needed.

System Integrity: Since the ORC turbine is a closed loop system, there is no worry about quality of ambient air and other problems associated with gas fired turbines.  This is a basic chiller platform that has a much greater longevity than gas turbines.

Integrated Heat Exchanger:  The condenser on the system can be used to integrate into your system to provide hot water, hot air, or chiller applications (refrigeration, air conditioning, etc.).

Generate More Power: If you have a large gas turbine or diesel genset and want to generate more power, the ORC Infinity Turbine from Global Energy is the answer.

Caterpillar Solar Taurus 60 Turbine Generator Example:  If you take the waste heat from a 5.2 megawatt Solar Taurus unit, you can make an additional 1 megawatt of power from our ORC Infinity Turbine.  Payback on equipment is about 2-3 years based on $.10 / kwh savings.  Click here for more info.

Generate CO2 Trading Credits:  Our systems in many cases will earn you CO2 credits, depending on fuel source or heat recovery. For a Solar Taurus 5.2 MW system using our 1 MWe generator, that's an additional $150,000 per year.

For more information on the Infinity Microturbine, click here.

More on Capstone Microturbines

Green Buildings: Currently in New York City, microturbines are being incorporated into the new builds to not only save on utility bills, but efficiently produce hot water and electricity.  The side benefit is having a backup generator that is available at any time.

Global Energy is working on a concept which puts a catalytic converter on the front of the Capstone to convert ozone to pure oxygen.  While the performance benefits are negligible, this concept allows the microturbine to act as a huge air filter for the environment.  In cities like LA, where ozone is a part of daily life, this could have some impact.

Renewable Fuels:

Currently there is at least one group (FlexEnergy) that is converting these to hydrogen and other marginal btu/unit volume gas (including wood gas). There are other groups developing break-through technology turbines, however those won't be available to the market for some time.

The idea that Global has is to package a small gas turbine (or APU) into a mini-container, which has the same mounting fixtures that larger shipping containers feature. The gas turbine would have a shaft output (PTO) which can be used for any multitude of purposes, including running a generator, direct drive pump (for air, gas,oil, water, or slurry).  In cooperation with Ocean Ethanol, Global Energy has a method to incorporate the Capstone Microturbine into methanol production as well as biodiesel production.  Through a process to capture the heat and CO2 from the turbine exhaust stream, we can produce methanol which is used in biodiesel production, or can be used directly in any FlexFuel vehicle. Best of all, there is a 10 percent Federal Credit for purchasing a microturbine, and a $.41 per gallon Federal credit for producing methanol.  There are also Carbon Credits available via Kyoto Protocol participating countries.

Why Repackage the Microturbine Into a Shaft Drive Unit ?

While the microturbine is generally packaged for electrical generation, the primary demand for service is pumping (oil, water, chemicals, gas compression, refrigeration compressor, etc.).

In addition, we found that sometimes a electrical generator that is grid based isn't such a great idea during a thunderstorm.

This is one of the biggest complaints for oil field utilization - a lightning strike can take out an entire field of pumps.

Waste Heat Generator:

Using refrigerant as the working fluid, large scale geothermal waste heat generators are now a reality (ORC Organic Rankine Cycle).

We're taking the idea to the next level - by using the waste heat from the microturbine, we can generator additional power and still have heat left over for space heating.

If you already have a CHP unit, you can add on this concept to run an electrical generator off of the hot water.

Click here for more info.

A Better Downhole Pump:

If you combine a microturbine with a bladeless pump (DiscFlo) you have an amazing range of utility - from pumping air, hydraulics (that can be used to power other pumps), oil, water, to even concrete.

When used as a downhole pump, you have a more efficient pumping operation.  When used to pump air down the hole, you eliminated pumping liquids through a pump all-together.

Cavitation Fluid Heater:

New developments in heating technology can allow the Capstone to retrofit its electrical alternator with a rotating disc cavitation fluid heater.  The disc turbine allows the direct conversion of water to steam or hot water just by using shaft horsepower and allowing the water to cavitate.  Normally you want to avoid cavitation, but in this process, you use the force of the water to create a vacuum, which results in steam production.  The process is near 100 percent efficient, and eliminates problems associated with scaling  and other inherencies that typically occur with boilers or heat exchangers. 

To be more exact, you could have a microturbine driven cavitational fluid heating pump to eliminate your boiler.  Of course you can buy off-the-shelf electric motor driven units as well if you don’t want to retrofit your Capstone.

Global Energy - Disc Turbine

Global Energy has just filed for patent for a new disc turbine.  For more information, please visit our website:

www.discturbine.com

This turbine will produce shaft horsepower, but more important will produce fluid heat and pumping.  The turbine is modular, which means you can add stages for pumping, turbine, compression, cavitation heat, or steam production.

In most thermal applications - the heat is needed more than the electrical production, so this is the perfect solution.

Air Cycle Machine (ACM) - Using Compressed Air To Make Air Conditioning:

With technology first developed for the airline industry, you can providing cooling via a ECS (Environmental Control System) which uses air as the working medium to provide cooling.

Using the microturbine retrofitted with an air compressor, you have a new array of HVAC possibilities - for both heating water and cooling air.

Please click here for our applications section for more information.

Mini Containerized Microturbine

A containerized microturbine is highly mobile, and can be used for 95 percent of the world market demand for power - pumping.

What's Good and Bad About the Microturbine Market ?

(Editorial comment by Greg Giese of Global Energy 2007/2008)

Capstone is known for its poor pre-sales, poor quote and poor sales customer service. Sadly, even now in 2008 the situation has not been remedied. We get calls all the time regarding this issue and even though we have told Capstone, management there is not interested.

Give them a call and find out for yourself at 866-4-CAPSTONE (866-422-7786).

We recommend you call Capstone first, and if you’re unhappy with their service, give us a call next.

After sales support at Capstone is good and finding a certified Capstone technician is easy to do.  Parts are readily available and can generally be obtained in short order.

Silent Recall ?  In recent conversations with Darren Jamison (President of Capstone) he indicated that there was a problem with pre-2003 Capstones.  He said that distributors of Capstones were notified, but would not tell me exactly what the problem was - nor which models were effected.  I requested this information and wondered why it was not public information on their website.  To date, I have been provided with no written information on the problem.  So if you're an original owner of a Capstone Microturbine before 2003, please contact Capstone for a free upgrade (Capstone has conditions to fixing whatever problem it is - including that the unit must have been commissioned and has to have at least 8,000 hours on the unit).  Again, our push is for information on problems to be made available to the microturbine owners. 

Capstone Buys Up Old Inventory

In an effort to sqaush the secondary market,  Capstone management bought back some of the inventory of Alliant Energy.  While there are still literally hundreds of unsold microturbines out in warehouses, Alliant got lucky when Capstone put in a lowball offer to take the unused inventory out of the 7 year mothball storage.

Why is Global Different ?

Global Energy is reinventing how microturbines are sold. We don't put stock values ahead of product. We put customers first, not shareholders. Best yet, we can offer you entire energy solutions - including wind turbines. You call us, you get a real live person on the line answering any of your questions.  We don’t make you sign a non-disclosure agreement to get information.  We don’t have to approve of your project to quote you a microturbine.

Best of all, you don’t have to navigate the quagmire of sales hurdles to purchase a microturbine.  Just request a quote, and within 30 minutes, we’ll fax or email you a quote/invoice for a surplus, or used microturbine.  No hassles, just service.

What about servicing and maintenance on the Capstones ?

Best of all, almost all Capstones can be diagnosed via a phone modem or internet connection. 

There are basically two players in the worldwide market - Capstone and Ingersoll Rand.

Capstone by far has the most units out and operational. Ingersoll Rand made the move to built larger output microturbines and includes a integrated heat exchanger.

Capstone is following suit. Honeywell units are now orphaned, and there are not spare parts to repair them. All Capstone models are load-following, only the largest Ingersoll Rand units load-follow.  Load following allows you to decrease fuel flow when you’re demanding less production, as opposed to full-on regardless of kw production needed.

Honeywell briefly experimented with the small gas turbine market, then sold out to a larger company, which promptly ended the project, and landfilled the turbines out on lease, including spare parts. Other groups, such as Elliot, Turbec and some European firms are building microturbines, but they are not competitive with Capstone yet (I've tried contacting several of these firms, but have yet to get any response).

Microturbines:

Low emission power generators used in hybrid electric vehicles, distributed generation and micro-cogeneration

Global Energy

TEL(608) 238-6001

Disclaimer:

Global is not associated with Capstone Turbine in any way.

Global is not an authorized dealer, distributor, or reseller for Capstone, Elliot, Caterpillar or Ingersoll Rand. Both Capstone and Ingersoll Rand have requested to take images, text and references regarding their products off the website.

The goal of Global is to sell unsold inventories of microturbines, and sell used microturbines as well as larger gas turbine generator sets.