What happened to the Boundary Layer Turbine as the heat engine choice?
Boundary Layer Turbine, or the Tesla Turbine, as the initial candidate for the heat engine in this system. As exotic as a turbine may seem – its performance is significantly lower than steam engines, which have 90% mechanical efficiency. We switched to the steam engine. Initially, it appeared that Tesla turbines would be easier to fabricate, but it turns out that these turbines don’t have a long lifetime, unless exotic materials are used for the blades.
