Kuhto, Nikolay Kuzmich

N.K. Kukhto was born on December 12, 1919 in Soviet Vitebsk (now part of Belarus ) into a Belarusian-Latvian family. His father was a railway worker. After graduating from school, N.K. Kukhto entered the Vitebsk Technological and Energy College. In 1939 he was sent to the Vitebsk Machine Tool Plant named after Kirov, where until 1940 he worked as a foundry technician.

In 1940, N.K. Kukhto went to study at the Motor Department of the Kazan Aviation Institute . After the outbreak of World War II, students of the institute were mobilized into the army or defense enterprises. Since N.K. Kukhto was unsuitable for the vision service, he was sent to the Gorbunov Kazan Aviation Plant , where he worked in the forge and foundry. During the war, N.K. Kukhto continued to study in the evening department of KAI.

In preparation for the defense of the thesis, studies were allowed with a “separation from production”. This allowed N.K. Kukhto to move from the post of head of the workshop technical bureau at the plant to the institute, where the diploma was defended. After that, he is appointed head of the design team for combustion chambers in OKB-16. This appointment and determined his future design activity. The Kazan OKB-16, under the leadership of S. D. Kolosov, was developing the first domestic aircraft gas turbine engine, the prototype of which was a captured German model. Soon, the work was reoriented to another branch of engineering: gas turbine engines were supposed to be installed on warships.

On May 7, 1954, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution on the organization at the Southern Turbine Plant in Nikolaev (now in Ukraine ) of the Special Design Bureau of gas turbine plants (now the Zorya-Mashproekt Scientific-Production Enterprise). The chief designer is appointed S. D. Kolosov. Specialists for the new design bureau were gathered from all over the USSR. Among the people who moved from Kazan to Nikolaev was the Kuhto family. Nikolai Kuzmich headed the department of combustion chambers in the bureau. The Bureau is engaged in the creation of gas turbine power plants for military and civilian ships.

In 1959, N.K. Kukhto was sent to the People's Republic of China as part of a program of scientific and technical assistance from the USSR to then friendly Maoist China. In Harbin, Soviet experts helped create a gas turbine engine plant. In 1960, due to ideological differences, Soviet-Chinese friendship came to an end, and the Kuhto family was forced to prematurely return from China. For his work at the Harbin plant, N.K. Kukhto was awarded the Medal of Sino-Soviet Friendship (PRC).

In 1968, N.K. Kukhto defended his dissertation for the degree of candidate of technical sciences (a topic related to the defense industry is classified). In April of the same year, by a ministerial order, N.K. Kukhto was appointed deputy chief designer for the operation and serial production of NPP Mashproekt.

Gas turbine engines created in the NPP with the participation of N.K. Kukhto were intended mainly for civil and military shipbuilding. But at the same time, the group of N.K. Kukhto was developing a new application for gas turbine plants.

Aurora Borealis Station and State Prize

In 1969, in Tyumen , Mashproekt specialists assembled the first floating generating power station based on a gas turbine power plant (two GTG-1 gas turbine generators of 12,000 kW each). The floating barge station was called the Northern Lights .

This mobile power station was intended for the power supply of remote regions of the USSR. It could move along the water arteries, which made it possible to quickly connect areas located along the banks of Siberian and Far Eastern rivers to the electric grid. The station operated on two types of fuel: diesel and gaseous.

In 1975, Nikolai Kuzmich was awarded the USSR State Prize with the wording: "For the complex of works on the creation, development and use of floating power plants " Northern Lights " in order to solve the problem of energy supply in remote areas of the North-East of the USSR." In 1976, the designer was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor .

N.K. Kukhto went on a well-deserved rest in 1985, he was awarded a personal award. But even after that, he participated in the work of Mashproekt, founded the museum of the enterprise. N.K. Kukhto died in Nikolaev on March 23, 2006.

Modifications of gas turbine engines created with the participation of N.K. Kukhto are used today in shipbuilding (power plants), in the mining industry (gas pumping engines), and in the energy sector (gas turbine generators).