GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

The capability for gas turbines to operate on hydrogen-based fuels is a key future requirement to fulfil the target of CO2-free power generation. Currently, the maximum volumetric hydrogen fraction, up to which commercially available gas turbines can be operated with, lies between 30% and 50% depending on the specific gas turbine class and type. Ongoing H2020 projects are focusing on power-to-gas-to-power technologies and partly also address hydrogen combustion in gas turbines. They are focusing on the whole power-to-gas-to-power system and hence either on small GT sizes (12MW in HYFLEXPOWER) or target to demonstrate small hydrogen fractions (FLEXnCONFU). Consequently, significant technological advancements in the gas turbines’ combustion systems are required to further reduce and ultimately eliminate natural gas from the fuel blend.

The development of the combustion system development should have in mind the following constraints and present solutions to overcome the associated technical hurdles:

• Stable combustion properties of hydrogen-rich flames demonstrated in full-scale combustor hardware at high pressure gas turbine conditions and across the entire GT load. This includes static (no flame flashback) as well as dynamic stability (no thermo-acoustic instabilities)
• Ensure sufficiently high firing temperatures to maintain high cycle efficiency of the respective gas turbine class.
• Ensure ultra-low emissions of air pollutants, in particular those of nitrous oxides (NOx)
• Development of solutions for a combustion system that is capable to overcome previously mentioned technical challenges without the use of diluents (e.g. nitrogen, steam dilution, etc).