NEW METHOD FOR COMBUSTING HYDROGEN IN GAS TURBINE

Author: Joshua Partheepan Supervisor: Dr. Massimiliano Vasile

COPYRIGHT DECLARATION The copyright of this thesis belongs to the author under the terms of the United Kingdom Copyright Acts as qualified by University of Strathclyde Regulation 3.50. Due acknowledgement must always be made of the use of any material contained in, or derived from, this thesis.

Signed: Joshua Partheepan

Date: 02/09/13

A new method for combusting hydrogen in a gas turbine has been proposed, the method aims at integrating it together with hydrogen storage system for renewables. SPECIFICATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS The major requirement for the system to work is an atmospheric or a high pressure alkaline electrolyser, which is used to split water in to hydrogen and oxygen and store it at a pressure above 20 bars. The power required for electrolyser is given by any renewable system. The hydrogen oxygen mixture adiabatic flame temperature is 3200 oC, but it has to be reduced below 1500 oC to reduce thermal stress in turbine and combustion chamber, hence steam dilution is used to reduce temperature in the combustion chamber. The chemical reaction for the process is, H2 + 0.5 O2 +n H2O ------> (n+1) H2O Combustion Hydrogen & Oxygen At 21 bar, (180- 450) oC Steam for diluting fuel At 21 bar, (180- 450) oC Chamber 96 % Efficient Steam 20 bar, at max of 1500 oC

Figure 1. Combustion technique of H2 and O2 with steam dilution to generate steam. Steam enters the turbine at 1200 1500 oC and 20 bars, and leaves the temperature at 600 1000 oC at 1.2 bars. It again enters HRSG, where the heat is extracted completely and it leaves the HRSG as hot water at 60 95 oC and emptied in to water reserve. The heat extracted in HRSG is used to heat the water from reserve which is converted in to steam and feed to the combustion chamber for fuel dilution. This makes loop closed. Theoretical Efficiency of gas turbine is >80 %, and expected practical efficiency is >75 %

Efficiency of commercially available Electrolyser including compression is 75 % ( Source from : IHT Electrolyser < http://www.iht.ch/technologie/electrolysis/industry/technicalinformation-benefits-electrolysers.html>).

Round trip efficiency of electrolyser storage turbine system is >59 %

BLOCK DIAGRAM

Figure 2. Block diagram of proposed hydrogen gas turbine system for power generation.

ASSUMPTIONS IN THE CYCLE CONSTRAINS Combustion chamber efficiency Turbine Efficiency Shaft Losses Generator Efficiency HRSG Efficiency Water Pump Efficiency Excess Moles of steam per mole of Hydrogen Net available Output Power Maximum Efficiency of the Cycle which includes internal power consumption. Expected Practical Efficiency >72 % 96 % 94 % 3% 98 % 85 % 94 % 2 6 Moles 4 MW 82.63 % VALUE

Table 1. Assumptions made in designing the cycle. (All the values are at full load) ADVANTAGES No compressor is required as hydrogen, oxygen and steam are delivered in to the combustion chamber at 21 bars and hot superheated steam leaves combustion chamber at 20 bars, which saves quite a lot of fuel and reduce cost and size of turbine. As steam is the flue gas, maximum heat can be extracted from it, and can be reused. System is closed loop and no greenhouse gas is released in any forms. As gas turbine is used, it can be quickly started and shut down, less maintenance, ramping according to load is possible with less efficiency drop. CHALLENGES Hydrogen turbine is not commercially available hence it is costly at the movement. All the components in the system are readily available but used in different technologies, bringing them together will make this system possible. Research has to be done to improve the cycle at different pressure and temperature, as the above discussed cycle is just a basic model.