Member - Advanced Microturbines

Smart gas/water grids depend on the monitoring and control equipment installed on the pipeline. However, the main hurdle for these smart systems is their dependency on continuous and reliable power supply, which is a core issue for off-grid pipeline networks. Our company designs and produces a novel patented, miniaturized, integrated millimiter-sized Microturbine, designed to be introduced into the gas and water distribution pipelines, taking advantage of existing gas/water pressure drops and gas/water flow in the system to generate electricity in off-grid contexts (e.g. remote areas) in a reliable way. The Microturbines are developed in two sizes, to address different energy needs: 30 W and 150 W Such electricity can be used: • to locally power equipment for the real-time monitoring of pipelines, such as remote terminal units, pressure transmitters, metering devices, flow converters, IoT devices and field instrumentation; • to locally power control actuators, such as pressure reducing valve motors, thus enabling active real-time pressure control of the network, or monitoring the water quality. Hence our Microturbines enable smart IoT technologies, resulting in a more energetically efficient management of these pipelines with increased reliability, and reduces operational costs. In particular it enables real-time monitoring and active pressure management of the network. Wireless real-time (every 2-3 minutes) communication with control centers is not feasible with just a battery-based power supply, due to high energy demands that are not supportable by battery alone, that limits wireless communication to just a connection every 24 hours. The large amount of data generated open applications and new markets in providing control and monitoring in ever more isolated and remote sites. For gas network active pressure management allows to work at low pressure, offering not only energy savings, but contributing to reduce the global warming through reduction of gas leakages, that majorly impact on greenhouse effect (methane has an impact 84 times higher than CO2 on global warming). For water network efficient water management decreases Non-Revenue Water (NRW), i.e. water that has been supplied to the network but is not billed, saves energy, reduces repair and maintenance costs, reduces public liability and detrimental publicity; this results in deferred infrastructure renewals and extended asset life of mains and service connections, in fewer problems on customer service connections and plumbing systems, all leading to fewer customer complaints.