Session: 03-01 Hydrogen

Paper Number: 80924

80924 - Demonstration of Natural Gas and Hydrogen Co-Combustion in an Industrial Gas Turbine 

Hydrogen co-firing in a gas turbine is believed to cover an energy transition pathway with green hydrogen as a driver to lower the carbon footprint of  existing thermal power generation or cogeneration plants through the gradual increase of hydrogen injection in the existing natural gas grid. Today there is limited operational experience on co-combustion of hydrogen and natural gas in an existing gas turbine in an industrial environment. The ENGIE owned Siemens SGT-600 (Alstom legacy GT10B) 24 MW industrial gas turbine in the port of Antwerp (Belgium) was selected as a demonstrator for co-firing natural gas with hydrogen.

Several challenges like increasing risk of flame flashback due to the enhanced turbulent flame speed, avoiding higher NOx emissions due to an increase of local flame temperature, supply and homogeneous mixing of hydrogen with natural gas as well as safety aspects have to be addressed when dealing with hydrogen fuel blends.

In order to limit the risks of the industrial gas turbine testing a dual step approach was taken. ENGIE teamed up with the German Aerospace Center, Institute of Combustion Technology in Stuttgart to perform in a first step tests with a scaled burner at gas turbine relevant operating conditions in their high-pressure combustor rig.  In these tests the onset of flashback as well as the combustor characteristics with respect to burner wall temperatures, emissions and combustion dynamics were investigated for base load and part load conditions, both for pure natural gas and various natural gas and hydrogen blends. In this paper the effect of hydrogen addition on flame position and shape based on OH*-chemiluminescence images will be discussed. In addition, the impact on NOx and CO emissions as well as combustions dynamics will be reported. In general, the scaled-burner tests were encouraging and enabled the second step, the exploration of hydrogen limits of the second generation DLE burner installed in the engine in Antwerp.

To inject the hydrogen into the industrial gas turbine, a hydrogen supply line was developed and installed next to the gas turbine. This hydrogen supply line consisted of a hydrogen unloading station, a pressure reducing line, a 3D additive manufactured flow controller and a mixer. This set-up allowed to connect a hydrogen truck trailer to perform the co-combustion tests. A test campaign of several operational tests at base and part load with hydrogen variation up to 25 vol% has been successfully performed where the gas composition, emissions, combustion dynamics and operational parameters are actively monitored in order to assess the impact on performance. Moreover, the impact of the hydrogen addition on the flame stability has been further assessed through the combustion tuning. The whole test campaign has been executed while the gas turbine stayed online, with no impact to the industrial steam customer. It has been proved that co-firing of up to 10% could be achieved with no adverse effects on the performance of the machine. Stable operation has been observed up to 25%vol hydrogen co-combustion, but with trespassing the local emission limits.

Presenting Author: Hannes Laget Laborelec

Presenting Author Biography: A Project Manager working on Energy Storage and Green Thermal Technology projects, Hannes leads R&amp;D projects in this area for the ENGIE Group. Previously, he worked as a key expert in gas turbine combustion and process performance and an expert in solar energy. He has experience with gas turbine combustion tuning and control systems, fuel flexibility, air filtration and efficiency improvements, as well as the design of solar thermal energy power plants. More recently, he has specialized in electrochemical and thermal energy storage systems.<br/>Hannes has also been involved, among other activities, in plant operator training, root cause failure analyses, due diligences and technical support for a wide range of power stations across the world.

Authors:

Hannes Laget Laborelec
Peter Griebel Institute of Combustion Technology
Luc Gooren Laborelec
Fabian Hampp DLR - Institute of combustion
Oliver Lammel German Aerospace Center (DLR) - Institute of Combustion Technology
Nicolas Jouret KU Leuven