The energy industry must change dramatically in order to reduce CO2-emissions and to slow down climate change. Germany, for example, decided to shut down all large nuclear (2022) and fossil thermal power plants by 2038. Power generation will then rely on fluctuating renewables such as wind power and solar. However, thermal power plants will still play a role with respect to waste incineration, biomass, exploitation of geothermal wells, concentrated solar power (CSP), power-to-heat-to-power plants (P2H2P), and of course waste heat recovery (WHR). While the multistage axial turbine has prevailed for the last hundred years in power plants of the several hundred MW class, this architecture is certainly not the appropriate solution for small-scale waste heat recovery below 1 MW or even below 100 kW. Simpler, cost-effective turbo generators are required. Therefore, the authors examine uncommon turbine architectures that are known per se but were abandoned when power plants grew due to their poor efficiency compared to the multistage axial machines. One of these concepts is the so-called Elektra turbine, a velocity compounded radial re-entry turbine. The paper describes the concept of the Elektra turbine in comparison to other turbine concepts, especially other velocity compounded turbines, such as the Curtis type. In the second part, the 1D design and 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) optimization of the 5 kW air turbine demonstrator is explained. Finally, experimentally determined efficiency characteristics of various early versions of the Elektra are presented, compared, and critically discussed regarding the originally defined design approach. The unsteady CFD calculation of the final Elektra version promised 49.4% total-to-static isentropic efficiency, whereas the experiments confirmed 44.5%.

In order to meet the targets set out in the Paris climate agreement of 2015, the energy sector needs to be restructured. In Germany for example the goal is to move out of both nuclear and coal-fired power. In order to fulfil more demanding energy requests alternative sources of energy must be found and made available. One component is the usage of Waste Heat Recovery. This paper deals with the evaluation simulation of an Elektra turbine, which concept is a velocity compounded radial re-entry single wheel turbine. Based on the first turbine design, multiple simulations were carried out in order to maximize the efficiency. With these simulations, optimization opportunities are described and identified. The paper concludes with a comparison of the results achieved by numerical simulation and on the experimental test bench. The main focus for this paper is to analyze the actual flow phenomena to identify possibilities for further improvements. All simulations were calculated with the commercial software FINETM/TURBO 15.1.