Experimental Campaign Tests on a Tesla Micro-Expanders

This paper presents the experimental campaign on Tesla turbo expanders carried out at Thermo-chemical Power group (TPG) of University of Genoa, Italy. An experiment system is established using compressed air as a working fluid. A 200 W turbine is tested with rotational speed up to 40000 rpm. Experimental analysis focused mainly on the efficiency features of this expander, showing the impact on performance of different disk gaps, disk thickness, discharge holes, exhaust geometry, as a function of speed and mass flow. An improved version of 3 kW air Tesla turboexpander is built. Preliminary experimental results are discussed along with the effect of number of nozzles on the performance of the turbine.