Paul Corkery, GE Aviation general manager of turboprops, gives an update on the status of the new Catalyst turboprop for Textron Aviation’s Beechcraft Denali, and discusses its performance and long-term potential. 

Rush transcript:

Molly McMillin:

Welcome and thank you for joining us today for Aviation Week's business and commercial aviation podcast. I'm Molly McMillin, managing editor of business aviation for the Aviation Week Network. Joining me today is Paul Corkery, GE Aviation's general manager of turboprops. Today we will discuss the company's new Catalyst advanced engine program, the engine that was selected by Textron Aviation for its new Beechcraft Denali turboprop single. Paul and I visited at EAA AirVenture recently where the engine was on display and sounds like it's entering the homestretch. So thanks for joining us, Paul.

Paul Corkery:

Great to see you again, Molly. It's been a week since EAA and thanks for giving us the opportunity to highlight where we are at on the Catalyst. As you know, the Catalyst is a new center line engine that we're developing in Europe. We have 400 engineers across Europe working on it over the last few years. Really, the reason we are in Europe is... that's where a lot of the capability that we're using to design this engine. It's an Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany. And as you said, we're in the homestretch, so we've gone through all of our development testing, we've pivoted to certification testing. We're about 30% done with the certification testing, 35% done with the documentations, submitted to the regulatory authorities. And what we found out is, our performance is better than we expected, slightly better.

Paul Corkery:

And we gave ourselves tough targets, when we started this process, Powered out to two, we're hoping to be 10% against the competition, for example, 31,000 feet or 14% better. We've done all of our icing testing and altitude testing and the various other development testing. So we can validate our models are correct and actually slightly low, which is good. Also, fuel burn was 16 to 18% better and fuel burn... And of course, if you are burning less fuel, your emissions go down, so CO2 is down 15%. So we feel good about the performance of the engine. We're in the homestretch, like you said, another 60, 70% of the certification testing. We just started another cert test called IMI, which is a key test, we do up to 2000 cycles on the engine. It's a maintenance interval test. That's a big task force as well. And then we're coming up to ice crystal testing as well. So we feel good about where we're at in the program, moving forward. And of course, we're laser-focused on supporting the Beechcraft Denali, which is just an excellent aircraft.

Molly McMillin:

So when do you expect flight testing to begin? And when do you expect certification of the engine?

Paul Corkery:

Yeah. So thanks Molly for those questions. In terms of flight testing, we're buttoning up right now. We have a flying test bed in Europe. It’s a twin engine that we're putting the Catalyst on to do initial flight testing on. We're getting all the paperwork submitted for the permit to fly. We expect that over the next couple of months to be flying. But we're working closely with the regulatory authorities on that. And that places engine certification and the latter part of 2022.

Molly McMillin:

Okay. And I believe then... Would the Denali will be certified right after that or about the same time?

Paul Corkery:

Yeah, of course we're supporting our the Denali schedule.

Molly McMillin:

Right. And you had talked about GE’s selection of Europe and several places that's working on it. Why did you decide... My understanding is, this is the first time that you've developed and produced an engine over there, right? What were the reasons behind that?

Paul Corkery:

Yeah, that's right, Molly. To first, right? First time we really developed a new turboprop in this class of engine. This is 1300 shaft horsepower. And the second one we did – it’s  the first time, we're doing a complete engine design in Europe. And the reason we did that is, we go where the capability is. We have 400 plus engineers working on this program. So we looked and you can't just go hire those or move around and bring them on board. So we looked across and found that in Europe, where we had that capability. For example, in Italy, we have, they're very, very good at gear boxes, design, FADECs and also the low pressure turbine. In Poland, [they are] very good at rotating compressors and high pressure turbines. And then, in Germany on the compressor. And then of course in Prague, we have a lot of systems integration and final tests. So when we put this together we went out and said where are the competencies. It’s hard to find those competencies.

Molly McMillin:

GE had some delays with the program. Can you talk about what was behind some of those?

Paul Corkery:

Yeah, sure, Molly. I think at the end of the day, as I mentioned, we're doing this in Europe and we're also doing flight testing in Europe. We have the flying test bed in Berlin, and I think it's on me. I underestimated how much that took to go through that process to prepare the... to the plane for flying. And so, that's really where our headwinds came out of is... all is the  regulatory and the process to get a permit to fly. And like I mentioned that earlier, we are closing on getting all that paperwork completed. The engine's running great. We've taxied the aircraft, we've done several runs on the plane. It's really buttoning up the paperwork to get that permit to fly.

Molly McMillin:

Can you talk about some of the characteristics on this engine?

Paul Corkery:

Yeah, Molly. Now I'll just talk about the technologies in terms of what's different in this marketplace, right? So basically we're bringing big engine technology into a smaller package.  The competition in this space is very good. They've got demonstrated performance over decades, solid engines. And we thought it was time for a step function change in technology. And so we are bringing our big engine technology into here.  If I start on the left-hand side of the turbine and just talk about the compressor and the combustor, and then the turbine, what did we bring that's different in this market?

Paul Corkery:

Number one is variable geometry on the compressor and a higher pressure ratio. So what that means when I say variable geometry, the inlet guy veins a first stage, all move similar to our big engines. That allows us to control the air flow through the compressor and thus through the turbine in a more optimized way. So as your conditions change over your flight profile, we can increase the air flow or decrease it depending on the power demand that you have. So that's, that's big engine technology that we're bringing here that helps us maintain our power as we go up to altitude, but also burn less fuel.

Paul Corkery:

I mentioned on the compressor that we have 16 to one pressure ratio that the typical in this market is 11 to 12 to one. So we're, we're actually putting higher pressure out of the compressor. Then we put it into a, a combustor and we have really fine nozzles for atomization, but also advanced cooling techniques that we have so we can burn hotter. Thus, when you burn hotter, you have a single crystal turbine blades in cool turbine blades. Again, all this is a demonstrated performance on bigger engines, but that means since there's more energy, we can harvest more energy and produce more power.

Paul Corkery:

And then the last piece is, we have three stages on the low pressure turbine, which is optimized around the aircraft. So we can harness that more energy that's coming out of the airflow. So the combination of the compressor technology, the combustor and the turbine technology really enables that power and lower fuel burn and thus lower emissions. And there's one last piece that we brought here as a FADEC, which is a full authority digital engine and I'll say prop controller, right? As we add to that, so again, this is technology we're bringing here. What that really does the FADEC, it's a dual channel, digital control system. If you lose one channel, the other manual will automatically take over. But it allows us to really harvest the performance of the engine, so what it knows is the state of the aircraft.

Paul Corkery:

It knows your density altitude, what your bleed is, what your icing systems on, what's your electrical demand, your inertial separator state. And then what it does is it optimizes the power management, how much air flow do I need through the VSPs, how much fuel flow and what's my prop position to optimize in that state of the flight profile. And that all delivers a single lever control to the pilot. So the pilot is not worried about, am I over temping or over speeding or, or over torquing, the engine? The FADEC is making sure that the engine is in a safe state, but it's also optimizing the fuel flow, the air flow and the pitch position for the pilots, so he's not having to adjust that at will. So he's just moving the throttle in a steady state, or when he's going through some sort of transition and that FADEC is calculating and optimizing for him. So it takes a lot of the pilot demand off of the pilot, so he can focus on flying the aircraft.

Paul Corkery:

And I covered a lot of real estate there, Molly. So if you have any questions, but I was trying to walk through the engine on technologies and then layer on the control system.

Molly McMillin:

Thank you for that explanation. I know you are very focused on the Denali right now, but what is the broader market for this engine? And what do you looking at? I know there's some looking at like maybe the hybrid electric market and that sort of thing. What are you seeing big picture?

Paul Corkery:

Yeah, Molly. Thanks for that question. Both of us were up at Oshkosh last week, and Oshkosh really gives you some insight, a lot of insight, actually on some trends in the marketplace. So I think, we are focused on our customer, the Denali, but when we look at the performance of this engine, as I talked about in terms of power and fuel burn, it opens up other opportunities for us. And that's our goal, but I want to talk just a minute about a lot of things we saw at Oshkosh, which is around hybrid, VTOL, sustainable aviation fuels, UAVs, things like that, that we think we're positioned well. And what do I mean by that Molly? If you take the Catalyst engine and you take off the prop and you put a permanent magnet generator, and your power converter, we can produce one megawatt of power.

Paul Corkery:

And a lot of these trends towards hybrid solutions and ultimately full electrification, you need power. And so, providing a one megawatt of power to a distributed propulsive system that a lot of people are looking at as demonstrated last week. And in Oshkosh, we feel we're well positioned to work with that, and to control that you need digital controls and advanced control systems, and the FADEC will help out in that as well.

Paul Corkery:

So I think it was really exciting to me to see that the trends of the market and hybrid. The other one is sustainable, aviation fuels. Whether the blend is 40 50% or wherever, it makes up. We have a lot of experience across our turbines and our aviation turbines and burning sustainable fuels. So we'll start burning sustainable fuels and testing those out next year on the catalyst. But those two areas, you saw that there's a lot of buzz and a lot of interest around them. And I think we're actually coming in with the right technology at the right time, after we deliver for our customer to be positioned, to play in those markets as they progress, whether it's hybrid or sustainable fuels.

Molly McMillin:

As an engine manufacturer, what do you see as the timeframe for that?

Paul Corkery:

That's the big question, Molly? The timeframe, I think that we saw aircraft flying, right? All electric, air flight flying it at Oshkosh.  I think there's a lot of discussion around the regulatory process there. Timing... I'm not sure, but I can tell you this, that we are positioned well with the engine and electrical capability. I think it's at the beginning of the curve, and I think it's exciting. The timing is the big question. But we are positioned for whatever that timing is.

Molly McMillin:

All right. Well, thank you, Paul. It looks like that's all the time we have for today. Thanks for being with us, Paul. And thank you for being with us. This BCA podcast will be available for download on Stitcher, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and Spotify. Thank you again for joining us and have a great rest of your day.