When it comes to power generation, incremental changes can often be easier to implement than significant overhauls. While drastic transformations may be risky for business, small modifications can help future-forward companies move cautiously yet confidently toward new technology and energy transition. Because companies can identify and mitigate potential risks and pitfalls as they arise, they can preserve stability.
A turbulent supply chain has created obstacles for utilities and private companies as they look to boost renewable energy output. However, plants can move toward progress and transformation by taking small but purposeful steps toward the energy transition, ultimately creating a safety net to protect against sudden upheaval or failure. This is especially significant for the mission-critical power-generation industry and heavy and hard-to-abate sectors, such as steel, glass, chemicals and transportation.
“There is an immediacy to the application of a technology-based retrofit solution to improve an existing asset’s reliability and functionality,” says Jeffrey Benoit, Vice President of Global Clean Energy Solutions at PSM, a Hanwha company specializing in clean energy retrofits and services for gas turbines. “This is the epitome of the circular economy, where existing equipment in hard-to-abate sectors can be repurposed and revitalized, yielding impactful decarbonization results with comparatively low investments. In many cases and applications, ‘rip and replace’ of the existing turbine equipment and installing new does not necessarily mean ‘better’ — especially in the gas turbine power sector.”
Improving turbine performance without equipment replacement
Standard gas-powered turbines are used across industries, powering everything from electrical generators and pumps to compressors. Nearly every plant has them, which means they also contribute to the Scope 3 emissions of virtually every downstream business in the supply chain.
Upgrading standard gas turbines to use hydrogen fuel exemplifies the energy-transition improvements that are possible without replacing otherwise functional equipment. By taking advantage of revolutionary new retrofitting capabilities for gas turbines, equipment owners can accelerate their progress toward cleaner fuel by facilitating the use of hydrogen and natural gas blends. These hydrogen retrofits allow plants and heavy industries to improve their existing power-generation assets and create an affordable path in the clean energy transition.
The future: Hydrogen gas turbines
When it comes to energy per mass, hydrogen outperforms all other fuels. When burned in a gas turbine, its power output can equal or even outpace the output from fossil fuels.
Through straightforward retrofits and upgrades, nearly any existing combustion gas turbine can pivot to burn natural gas and hydrogen simultaneously. Modifying fuel and combustion systems (and relevant fuel accessories and safety systems) to be compatible with hydrogen can significantly reduce the amount of fossil natural gas fuel required. This results in an energy generation system with substantially lower carbon emissions. PSM is focused on delivering a retrofit solution that can consume any blend of natural gas and hydrogen, and the company is on its way to achieving this success. This creates the capability of fully decarbonized dispatchable power with 100% hydrogen when available without compromising the ability to provide power from fossil natural gas.
Unlike other low-carbon or zero-carbon power sources, hydrogen's high-power output and heat generation capabilities make it well-suited for industrial applications where unabated carbon emission generation has historically been extremely difficult to address. Thus, hydrogen innovation can help factories and foundries in hard-to-abate industrial sectors preserve their existing systems and more cost-effectively achieve their renewable energy ambitions. Such upgrades improve capital return on investment for modifying original equipment and eliminate the cost and effort of disposing of the current equipment entirely.
Providing affordability, reliability and sustainability
Groundbreaking hydrogen co-firing technologies can help plants:
- Improve gas turbine efficiency without complete replacement
- Boost power output
- Enhance operational flexibility
- Embrace cleaner fuel alternatives to reduce emissions
- Prevent stranded assets that become liabilities and can no longer be used
- Create an energy-transition foundation for future needs
- Optimize lifecycle and maintenance costs
PSM, alongside other Hanwha affiliates Thomassen Energy and Hanwha Power Systems, recently became the first to successfully test a 60% hydrogen by volume blend in a retrofitted 80 MW gas turbine, which resulted in a 22% reduction of CO2 emissions compared to natural gas alone. The turbine used a mix of natural gas, hydrogen, and hydrogen-containing gas from the facility, with a proprietary blending system providing the necessary fuel delivery.
The next objective of this product development validation program is to operate gas turbines with 100% hydrogen or other renewable fuels to create carbon-free power generation in a net-zero world. Hanwha’s preliminary testing in a controlled, full-operation condition test facility has shown the ability to run on 100% hydrogen, which, when applied to a commercial turbine application, will result in dispatchable power with no carbon footprint.
While the technology development roadmap continues successfully towards 100% hydrogen fuel applications, that doesn’t mean equipment owners can’t take steps toward cleaner power generation now. Retrofitting turbines today to use a blend of natural gas and zero-carbon hydrogen fuel still significantly reduces a turbine’s carbon emissions and could quickly meet the needs of turbine operators depending on their particular application and business objectives. This can be a sound staged approach, while other users will want to focus on applying combustion retrofits to turbines that are ready for full hydrogen conversion tomorrow.
“As these intermittent generators continue to be installed at increasing rates,” says Benoit, “the converted gas turbine becomes a clean and reliable power source that aids the clean energy transition, instead of a carbon-producing source that must be curtailed.”
