The turbine engines under development at Peregrine Turbine Technologies in Wiscasset have been called “transformational” and “disruptive” by leaders in the tech industry. The highly efficient, low-emission system created through Peregrine’s turbine engine design has been called a potential game-changer for the energy industry.
The turbine engines have multiple applications, CEO David Stapp said, and the revolutionary design could mark a new approach to propulsion and power in multiple industries.
For another year, Peregrine Turbine Technologies will call the Wiscasset Municipal Airport its home. Wiscasset selectmen approved the terms of Peregrine’s lease with the airport for 2015-2016 at their Tuesday, Oct. 6 meeting.
From the Wiscasset Municipal Airport, Peregrine Turbine Technologies intends to bring the economic opportunities that accompany technology and innovation to Maine – a state that has largely missed out on the tech revolution, Stapp said.
Since high school, Stapp has been interested in jet engine design. “It’s what I was built to do,” he said. A former engineer with GE Aircraft Engines in Lynn, Mass., Stapp formed Peregrine Consulting in 1996 to work with a variety of clients in the aerospace industry on turbine engine and engineering designs.
Stapp moved to Maine in 1999, due to the quality of life Maine had to offer. It was where he chose to start his family, which has grown with four children. “I was looking for a place to land and I found Maine,” Stapp said. “This is my home.”
The only connection Stapp had to Wiscasset was its airport. As a pilot, he had a “natural magnetic attraction to the airport,” he said. Wiscasset is where he built his hangar to house his first airplane. In 2006, the airport became home to Peregrine Consulting.
Approximately five years ago, Stapp began to develop his own proprietary turbine engine design. The majority of turbine engines convert only 25 to 30 percent of fuel into energy, Stapp said. As an engineer, finding a more efficient design was “low-hanging fruit,” he said.
Through serendipity, he came across a gentleman working on supercritical carbon dioxide in a closed-cycle system, technology that has existed since the 1960s, but which Stapp had never heard of in his 30 years in the aerospace industry.
Carbon dioxide, heated to a supercritical state, or a temperature above its critical temperature and pressure levels, is twice as dense as steam. In a closed-cycle power system, it has the ability to power energy-generating turbines with greater efficiency and a dramatically reduced footprint than other power sources, Breaking Energy reported.
Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. was also experimenting with supercritical carbon dioxide in a closed-cycle system to test its ability to efficiently produce electric energy. The system, however, requires a heating source.
Prior to Peregrine Turbine Technologies, no one working with supercritical carbon dioxide believed the system could be heated through an indirect heating source, such as combustible fuels.
Stapp devoted himself to the problem. The result was a groundbreaking engine design for a closed-cycle turbine powered with supercritical carbon dioxide, indirectly heated by combustibles, such as natural gas or biomass. With natural gas, the engine has the ability to power a 6-megawatt electrical power system, or enough energy for 2,000 homes, while dramatically reducing the emissions involved in energy production.
Stapp officially incorporated Peregrine Turbine Technology in 2012 with business partner Bob Brooks. In August of this year, Peregrine Turbine Technology signed a memorandum of understanding with Sandia National Laboratories to develop a pilot system based on Peregrine’s engine design.
The engine is “energy agnostic,” Stapp said, and can be heated through a variety of combustible fuels. The engine in development for Sandia is intended to use natural gas. However, Peregrine is simultaneously developing an engine that will utilize biomass in its closed-cycle system with supercritical carbon dioxide.
For Stapp, biomass is one of the most underrated renewable energy sources available and the greatest renewable energy asset in Maine. Despite a report promoted by opponents to a biomass facility in Massachusetts, which states biomass is more harmful to the environment than fossil fuels, biomass is carbon-neutral, Stapp said.
The report received a lot of air time but was later debunked, Stapp said. The Environmental Protection Agency has determined, with proper timber harvesting and reforestation practices, biomass is a carbon-neutral renewable-energy source.
Biomass is also a solution to the supply and demand issues experienced by other renewable energies like wind and solar, Stapp said. It is the only renewable that does not have the additional complication of energy storage, because it is burned when there is a demand, Stapp said.
Due to the efficiency of the system, the cost of electricity generated from a Peregrine turbine engine heated through biomass would be competitive with the cost of electricity from fossil fuels, he said.
Peregrine hopes to “fire up” its first engine in December 2017 and is working to identify potential locations for its biomass turbine engine system in the Midcoast, Stapp said. The company hopes to complete its engine for Sandia by the middle of 2018, Stapp said.
Some manufacturing work for the engines may occur outside Maine, but Peregrine Turbine Technologies is a Maine company, Stapp said.
Maine will remain the center of Peregrine’s manufacturing and assembly operations, Stapp said. The company is as much committed to creating energy efficient systems as it is to creating economic opportunities for Maine.
“I’d like to think my purpose on this earth is more than just making money,” Stapp said. “We want to create opportunities for people. That’s core to our value system.”
“Maine needs new industry,” Stapp said. “Massachusetts does not.” The company projects it will grow to 760 employees once manufacturing operations begin and the engines are brought to market. Already, four new employees have been added to the staff.
“These are talented guys coming out of school that would have to go out of state for work if it wasn’t for this job offering,” Stapp said. Strapped for space on the second floor of the airport’s main terminal building, the company will need to move in future years to expand, Stapp said.
However, the economic and energy opportunities created by the company’s technology will remain in Maine, and Stapp will always have a presence at the airport, he said.
