Session: 19-03: Micro Gas Turbines.

Submission Number: 179129

AGATUR Micro Gas Turbine Simulator: Quasi-Steady-State Modeling 

This paper presents a simulator for a 100 kW micro-gas turbine (MGT) fed with hydrogen–natural-gas blends. The MGT is installed in the AGATUR test facility at the ENEA-Casaccia Research Center and has been deeply modified to test the MGT operating response over a wide range of hydrogen/natural gas blending ratios. A predictive numerical tool supports test planning and de-risking, enabling rapid what-if analyses across operating conditions.

The simulator is implemented in ChemCAD and driven by an Excel based command and control interface. It runs in quasi-steady steps, converging the flowsheet while updating fuel and EGR actuators and controller states, thereby capturing the operating-point evolution without resolving high-frequency transients.

The logic coordinates the pilot and main methane valves to track the electrical power set-point while respecting temperature and rotational speed constraints. Hydrogen blending is treated as a user-imposed external disturbance, in accordance with the experimental plantl, while the controller compensates by modulating methane injection through the two valves.

The simulator supports operating-condition analyses and reproduction of experimental tests, enabling one-to-one comparisons with measured campaigns. The paper details the simulator architecture and validation and presents side-by-side results over multiple operating conditions, benchmarked against AGATUR experimental data, highlighting both predictive fidelity and the capability to replay experiments for post-test diagnosis and scenario exploration.

Presenting Author: Gianluca Cevolani Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Presenting Author Biography: Gianluca Cevolani holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Roma Tre University. He previously served as a research fellow contributing to the European project CO2OLHEAT, focusing on supercritical CO2 (sCO₂) for waste-heat recovery in energy-intensive industries. He is currently a second-year PhD student, conducting research on supercritical CO2 power systems, with interests spanning turbomachinery, cycle modeling, and optimization.

Authors:

Gianluca Cevolani Università degli Studi Roma Tre
Giuseppe Messina ENEA-Casaccia
Alessandro Furlani Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata
Ambra Giovannelli Università degli Studi Roma Tre