A forgotten XX. century mechanical engineer from BME, with world sucess

BME Mechanical Engineering degree of Béla Karlovitz

Béla Karlovitz, born in 1904 in Pápa, Hungary, graduated as a mechanical engineer at BME. His brilliance is surpassed by other Hungarian minds, such as Theodor von Kármán , and our nuclear scientists. Nevertheless, he was a prominent figure in combustion science; also, he invented the magnetohydrodynamic generator. Despite, only a little could be found about him, even in the archives.

Béla Karlovitz was born in the town of Pápa, 1904. His father was a pharmacist, a notable public figure in the region. His mother was a daughter of the local ironmonger called Hanauer. Hence, Béla was the nephew of István Á. Hanauer, the bishop of Vác. Béla Karlovitz was enrolled to the BME in 1922, after attending the Benedictine High Scool of Pápa, where he graduated in 1926 as a mechanical engineer. Later, he received an electrical engineer degree at the Eidgenössische Hochschule of Zürich (ETH Zürich). He married a Swiss girl, then returned to Hungary, staring a job at the Electric Works of Budapest.

The Eidgenössische
 Hochschule, Zurich

Béla Karlovitz and his colleague, Dénes Halász, have developed a process, which believed to offer a thermodynamic performance enhancement by 50%, compared to the state-of-the-art heat engines at that time, exploiting the Brayton cycle. The Hungarian newspaper, Az Ujság, on July 31 1938, wrote: ’[…] from the heat of the flue gas, generated in combustion, the medium is accelerated to high speed, then this high-speed flue gas, ionized by a special process, passes through an electromagnetic system, where the majority of its energy is utilized as electricity. The energy conversion process occurs without moving parts.’

  He could not realize his patent in Hungary, so he left Hungary in 1938 and joined the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in the US. He, with Dénes Halász,   patented the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) generator on August 13, 1940, under    the US2210918A patent number, as an extension of the HU2210918X patent. submitted in 1935 then extended the rights to the US in 1936, entitled as Process for the conversion of energy and apparatus for carrying out the process. Nevertheless, his story does not have the same motivation as other acknowledged scholars leaving Hungary this period. The local interest in this patent was apparent, hence, the mayor of Budapest himself gave Karlovitz a one-year leave. The Az Ujság communicates the ordinance of the mayor, dated June 30, that ’we had to allow the leave, not only for the fact that this new electricity generating process is beneficial to the electricity management but also, for that the invention of these two Hungarian engineers ages the international reputation of the Hungarian society of engineers.’ The news also mentioned that the Westinghouse company hosts him for a whole year, and provides half-million-dollar financial support for the experiments. However, during this one-year leave, the second world war broke out. Hence, his wife and family could only join him only in 1946. Karlovitz has worked at Westinghouse until 1947, then turned to combustion research. He was the Head of the Flame Research Section, Explosives and Physical Science Division, Bureau of Mines, Pittsburgh, PA, in 1953. Subsequently, he was with Combustion and Explosive Research, Inc. in Pittsburgh, PA.

  

The story of the MHD generator

Several researchers recognized the scientific potential of the MHD generator, so in 1962, the engineering applications were discussed in a dedicated conference, held in the UK. This event was followed by two other biannually. The MHD technology has lost the competition to nuclear energy in the 60s. Nevertheless, the development continued in the 70s since it supposed to significantly surpass the efficiency of the coal-fired thermal power plants with steam cycles. Most importantly, some companies have demonstrated the feasibility of MHD technology by this time. The gap in the energy market fueled the development in the ’80s, focusing on thermal power plants. Practically, all superpower countries showed research activity in this field. Interestingly, Yugoslavian engineers managed to build the first working MHD generator-based thermal power plant in 1989, followed by similar facilities in both the USA and Russia. In this era, the primary technological challenger of the MHD generator was the combined cycle thermal power plant, which consists of a gas turbine connected to a steam turbine. The latter unit utilizes the steam generated by the hot flue gas of the gas turbine. However, MHD technology lost again due to its higher cost.

This technology gained international public fame through marine applications. In the Hunt for Red October, the first and immediate bestseller novel of Tom Clancy, the Soviet Union has developed a Typhoon-class submarine with this ‘caterpillar’ propulsion system, providing stealth capabilities, hiding it from sonars. Along with the success of the book, the film adaptation won an Oscar in 1990. This story was not fictional since the marine application of MHD drive was in the air since the 60s. However, the Yamato-1, the first ship utilizing this technology, was only ready in the 90s, due to technological difficulties. However, its top speed was only 8 knots, which sealed the fate of the MHD-based power cycles.

The principal driving force of the development for more than fifty years was the operation without moving parts. Hence, it was less limited by material technology, unlike turbines. Even though it was not applied in energy, the physical principle is exploited by several instruments, for instance, flow meters for electrically conductive fluids.

Furthermore, the merit of Karlovitz Béla is distinguished in combustion; the Karlovitz number is named after him. It is a dimensionless number expressing the ratio of the chemical and flow time scales. Its more popular reciprocal, the Damköhler number, introduced by Gerhard Damköhler, a German chemical engineer, was published later. This non-dimensional number is an essential quantity of the Borghi-diagram in classifying turbulent flames. Their scientific contribution received increasing attention by the advancement of turbulence research, following the pioneering work of the Soviet mathematician, Andrei Kolmogorov, and the development of numeric combustion. The foundations of this latter field were established by Theodor von Karman (also an alumnus of BME Faculty of Mechanical Engineering). Knowing time scales is essential for simplifying the reaction chemistry since even the most powerful supercomputers are unable to simulate the processes in a real combustion chamber. Consequently, Karlovitz number rules the development of all heat engines.

The iron curtain was kept him from returning to Hungary, though, he managed to visit his homeland three times. Béla Karlovitz lived nearly one hundred years, died in 2004, buried with his wife in Pennsylvania. Until her death in 1982, they were married for almost sixty years. 

    

KB/VJ/LB

 This article could not have been realized without the help of BME Archives, and its head, Krisztina Batalka, and for technical aspects and technical translation and revision, Viktor Józsa, assistant professor of BME Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Energy Engineering.

Photo credits: BME Archives, Creative Commons