Stable high hydrogen low NOx combustion in full scale gas turbine combustor at high firing temperatures

Nowadays, the increasing awareness of the need to decarbonise the economy has put pressure on the power generation sector to reduce their share CO2 emissions. In this context, gas turbines are the most robust, mature, and cost-effective technology especially for large-scale power generation. A convenient approach to decarbonise the fuel of gas turbines is to mix natural gas with increasingly amounts of hydrogen. As such, it becomes essential although challenging for gas turbines to operate any mixture of natural gas and hydrogen. HELIOS will develop the needed technology for hydrogen combustion as a retrofit solution based on the FlameSheet™ combustor. Essential for this approach is a sound fundamental understanding of hydrogen combustion, combined with advanced numerical modelling techniques and measurement techniques of hydrogen combustion in a full-size combustor. This is essential to boost the required technological developments for utilization of hydrogen-enriched natural gas with the FlameSheet™ combustor. The HELIOS project will start at the gas-turbine testing using the FlameSheet™ combustor at well-defined lab conditions (TRL 4) and will reach realistic conditions in a relevant environment (TRL 6) by the end of the project. Besides the technical developments, HELIOS will stimulate the emergence of an immense innovative ecosystem and create a fertile ground for future up-take of this technology at larger scale. This becomes more and more relevant since GTs are one of the few options to generate high amounts of energy that are needed to compensate a grid that heavily relies on Renewable Energy Sources (RES) due to fluctuating wind and solar electricity supply. This HELIOS concept has the potential to contribute significantly to solving substantial challenges that Europe faces while pursuing to make its energy system smart, clean, flexible, secure, cost competitive and efficient.