World First: Siemens Energy Powers Gas Turbine With 100 Percent Renewable Hydrogen
Munich, Germany - In France, the local production of green hydrogen on site and its subsequent use in a gas turbine from Siemens Energy has been successfully realised in a pilot project. The project was implemented in the Hyflexpower project at the site of Smurfit Kappa, world market leader for paper packaging, in Saillat-sur-Vienne, France.
The Hyflexpower project demonstrates that hydrogen can be used as a flexible energy storage medium and that it is also possible to convert an existing gas-fired power plant turbine to run on renewable hydrogen, Siemens Energy said. Thus, it is a real driver for accelerating the decarbonisation of the most energy-intensive industries.
As early as 2022, an initial series of tests enabled the industrial gas turbine to run on 30 per cent hydrogen mixed with natural gas. Now, the power-to-hydrogen-to-power demonstrator has proven that state-of-the-art turbines with dry low-emission technology can run on up to 100 per cent hydrogen as well as natural gas and any mix in between.
The Hyflexpower consortium includes Siemens Energy, Engie through its subsidiary Engie Solutions, Centrax, Arttic, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and four European universities. DLR and the universities of Lund (Sweden), Duisburg-Essen (Germany) and University College London (UK) contributed to the development of the hydrogen turbine technology. Arttic supported the operational project management, while NTUA in Athens (Greece) carried out the economic, environmental and social analysis of the concept.
As consortium leader, Siemens Energy supplied the electrolyser for hydrogen production and developed the hydrogen gas turbine. Engie built the hydrogen production, storage and supply for the demonstrator. Centrax was responsible for the package upgrade to ensure safe operation with hydrogen as fuel.
Now that Hyflexpower has been tested for power generation, the next goal is to expand operations to industrial heat generation and other modes of operation. There are also plans to explore opportunities to expand and commercialise decarbonised power generation.
"We at Engie are very proud of this world first. The Hyflexpower project is remarkable for many reasons," says Frank Lacroix, Executive Vice President of Engie. In addition to the exceptional collaboration between several European partners, the forward-looking technology offers promising prospects and it allows "the use of renewable hydrogen in the industrial sectors that are the most difficult to decarbonise."
Source: IWR Online, 17 Oct 2023
