Posted on March 10, 2026

Eric Severson attended the 2026 International sCO2 Energy Technologies Symposium, March 2–5, 2026, in Pittsburgh, PA, to present recent work from the eLev research group:

Sayed Saleh, Takahiro Noguchi, Logan Rapp, and Eric Severson,
“Development of Electric Machines that Produce Radial Magnetic Forces to Statically Unload Foil Bearings and Enable Hermetic sCO₂ Turbomachinery,”
sCO2 Symposium, 2026.

You can find our publication in the sCO2 Symposium proceedings.

This paper extends previous published work by the same authors, in which they investigated electric machines designed to generate both torque and radial magnetic forces to unload static forces from foil bearings in hermetic supercritical CO₂ (sCO₂) turbomachinery. In this work, the authors present the practical implementation of these electric machines in real hermetic sCO₂ turbomachinery and illustrate their performance potential.

The symposium provided an opportunity to share progress on integrating bearingless machine concepts into sCO₂ turbomachinery and to engage with the broader research community working on advanced power cycle technologies.