Prediction of Novel Humified Gas Turbine Cycle Parameters for Ammonia/Hydrogen Fuels

Milana Guteša Božo and Agustin Valera-Medina
Additional contact information
Milana Guteša Božo: Research and Development Department, Termoinžinjering Ltd., 23000 Zrenjanin, Serbia
Agustin Valera-Medina: College of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Cardiff University, Queen’s Building, Cardiff CF243AA, UK

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 21, 1-20

Abstract: Carbon emissions reduction via the increase of sustainable energy sources in need of storage defines chemicals such as ammonia as one of the promising solutions for reliable power decarbonisation. However, the implementation of ammonia for fuelling purposes in gas turbines for industry and energy production is challenging when compared to current gas turbines fuelled with methane. One major concern is the efficiency of such systems, as this has direct implications in the profitability of these power schemes. Previous works performed around parameters prediction of standard gas turbine cycles showed that the implementation of ammonia/hydrogen as a fuel for gas turbines presents very limited overall efficiencies. Therefore, this paper covers a new approach of parameters prediction consisting of series of analytical and numerical studies used to determine emissions and efficiencies of a redesigned Brayton cycle fuelled with humidified ammonia/hydrogen blends. The combustion analysis was done using CHEMKIN-PRO (ANSYS, Canonsburg, PA, USA), and the results were used for determination of the combustion efficiency. Chemical kinetic results denote the production of very low NOx as a consequence of the recombination of species in a post combustion zone, thus delivering atmospheres with 99.2% vol. clean products. Further corrections to the cycle (i.e., compressor and turbine size) followed, indicating that the use of humidified ammonia-hydrogen blends with a total the amount of fuel added of 10.45 MW can produce total plant efficiencies ~34%. Values of the gas turbine cycle inlet parameters were varied and tested in order to determine sensibilities to these modifications, allowing changes of the analysed outlet parameters below 5%. The best results were used as inputs to determine the final efficiency of an improved Brayton cycle fuelled with humidified ammonia/hydrogen, reaching values up to 43.3% efficiency. It was notorious that humidification at the injector was irrelevant due to the high water production (up to 39.9%) at the combustion chamber, whilst further research is recommended to employ the unburned ammonia (0.6% vol. concentration) for the reduction of NOx left in the system (~10 ppm).

Keywords: ammonia/hydrogen blends; humified gas turbine; alternative fuels; sustainable energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/21/5749/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/21/5749/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:21:p:5749-:d:439106

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().