Abstract
Niigata University works in collaboration with AIST, YSEC, and companies in Niigata area to develop a compact jet engine for industrial unmanned aerial systems. The group work is called NIIGATA SKY PROJECT. The group aims to develop an environmentally friendly low-noise jet engine fueled by bio-oil. This paper describes two elementary tasks: (1) development of manufacturing skills for compact jet engine system; (2) experimental testing of Jatropha-oil-fueled compact jet engine. For the first task, the group successfully manufactured the NSP 3 jet engine that consists of a centrifugal compressor, an annular combustor, and an axial turbine. The design was made referring to the Netherlands-made engine. Over 90 percent of the engine parts were produced in Niigata area. The machining and assembly skills were nurtured and verified through tests using kerosene. The results demonstrated that engine has the capacity to output thrust of 10 kg or higher, comparable to the reference engine. For the second task, a US-made compact jet engine was tested using Jatropha-oil-mixed kerosene. This engine showed the capacity to work with the bio-oil mixture fuel at a maxim of 30% mixture rate. The engine fueled by the mixture oil emitted more carbon monoxide than the engine fueled by pure kerosene. However, the thrust of the mixture-oil-fueled engine differed only slightly from that of the pure-kerosene-fueled engine. The usefulness of the bio-oil mixture fuel was thus proved.
