UAV Turbines Demos its Microturbine Engine Operating with Environmentally Friendly Natural Gas

UAV Turbines, Inc. (UAVT), a pioneer of microturbine technology, today announced that its Monarch 5 turboshaft engine can now run on natural gas, signifying an unmatched level of fuel flexibility. Previously shown to run efficiently on all types of heavy fuels including jet fuel, the addition of natural gas extends this technology beyond flight and into ground emergency and standby power generation for both onsite and remote application areas. This fuel flexibility coupled with Monarch 5’s lightweight, portable, and reliable power generation capacity makes this engine a game-changer for the industry.

Fred Frigerio, UAV Turbines’ Senior Vice President of Engineering, commented, “A major feature of our gas turbine engines is that they operate with safe-to-handle heavy fuel such as Jet A and a wide variety of other fuels. With minor engineering changes, the Monarch 5 engine can adapt to several different clean energy fuel sources such as natural gas and hydrogen. Both are clean-burning fuels, with little or no output of greenhouse gases. Sustainable and clean energy sources are becoming more important for applications in various environments served by UAV Turbines’ new micro-turbogenerator product line.”

UAV Turbines’ miniaturized microturbine technology creates a vast new universe of opportunities for integration into systems powering hard-to-access remote weather stations, oil fields, telecom towers, construction sites, emergency field teams, stationary first responders and military vehicle communications. A very portable micro-turbogenerator system running on natural gas or diesel fuel will benefit these users by offering them the flexibility of running with various available fuels while allowing the user to select based on cost, availability, or quality.

Kirk Warshaw, CEO of UAV Turbines added, “Most recently, UAV Turbines emerged from a decade of stealth and privately funded research and development to make public demonstrations of its breakthrough propulsion and power generation technology platforms. Since the successful demonstration of the Monarch 5 in Group 3 UAV flight, UAV Turbines has demonstrated its Monarch Hybrid Range Extender (HREX) configuration and prototypes of its turbogenerator system for ground-power applications in the 3-40 kW range.”

UAV Turbines is currently curating a select group of launch customers with innovative design needs for engine orders being driven by emerging and high growth markets such as unmanned aircraft, military combat, urban air mobility and industrial, commercial and residential compact, efficient power sources.