Zerrin Turkeli
University of Auckland, Phd in Engineering

"To achieve my goal as a contributor towards the perfection of Ultra Micro Gas Turbines (UMGTs) as a power source I wanted to continue my research at one of the best universities in the world."

We’re all familiar with the internal combustion engine. They power the machines that take us to work and school each day, across oceans, and even to the moon and back.

But how small can an internal combustion engine get? The size of a softball? A golf ball? Smaller? Scientists at Berkley, California have created an engine roughly the size of a stack of pennies. The World’s smallest steam engine, meanwhile, is about 5 microns across. Considering the fact that a human hair is about 100 microns across, this engine is unbelievably tiny. And Phd student Zerrin Turkeli says they can go even smaller.

She’s part of the exciting field of micro combustion. “Energy is one of the most important and vital problems of this century.  As technological developments increase, our dependency on existing energy sources also increases. When I was a postgraduate research student at the University of Tokyo I came across this UMGT subject and I found it very interesting. I wanted to be a part of founding new energy sources for our comfort in addition to helping to provide a more sustainable environment.”

Micro combustion is the art of miniaturising combustion-based engines so that they can be used to power much smaller things than currently possible. As we build increasingly tiny machines we need more compact and efficient power sources. Right now we use batteries as power sources for these devices, but batteries are not light or compact. They constitute most of the weight of the devices and also need long hours of recharging.  “The combustion-based ultra micro gas turbine is one of the most promising alternative power sources for portable small electronic and mechanical miniature devices because of both its higher power and energy density,” says Turkeli. These tiny engines could be used as a power source for notebooks, or micro-robots, or as a propulsion system for tiny unmanned air vehicles (uav). These air vehicles could be used for surveillance, or provide support in search and rescue missions by the Police, Armed Forces and Civil Defence in disaster areas and civil emergencies.

Turkeli was a postgraduate research student for one year at the University of Tokyo in Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Japan. She also got her Masters Degree from the same university in the Department of Advanced Energy. She’s currently a student at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Auckland, and her Phd subject focuses on micro combustion and heat transfer analysis in small-scale heat exchangers (HEX-Combustors.) “To achieve my goal as a contributor towards the perfection of UMGT (Ultra Micro Gas Turbine) as a power source I wanted to continue my research at one of the best universities in the world. The University of Auckland’s Faculty of Engineering certainly fits this bill.” Turkeli was also fortunate enough to be selected as an NZIDRS scholar, “So I do not have to worry about the financial matters and I can concentrate on my subject with all my attention.”

And the HEX-Combustor she’s working on takes a lot of her concentration. She’s proud to point out that the combustor uses methane as a fuel. “New Zealand is an agricultural country and one of the most important problems for NZ is methane emissions from animal farming causing pollution. This negative by-product of animal farming can be potentially taken advantage of by using methane emissions as a fuel for a UMGT.” In the future, UMGT could also be utilised as a power source for farming machinery and equipment as well as other portable electronics and miniature mechanical devices. In other words, Turkeli’s work could help to drive the engine that keeps this country moving.