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Ready for hydrogen
Moving towards hydrogen as a fuel for gas turbines in power plants: The world’s first certification for H2-readiness is here.
Sebastiaan Ruijgrok and Peter Seyller, Siemens Energy; Thomas Gallinger and Pierre Huck, TÜV SÜD
Today, many new Combined Cycle Power Plants (CCPP) and other gas-firing power plants are being advertised as ‘H2-Ready’, bridges to a new decarbonized energy future. But until now there was no clear definition of what that term actually entails. For that reason, TÜV SÜD supported by Allianz Center for Technology (‘AZT’), and Siemens Energy developed a guideline defining ‘H2-Readiness’ for the first time. Based on the guideline TÜV SÜD derives requirements for a manufacturer’s H2-Readiness concept and offers independent third-party certification. This certification is being offered to the whole market by TÜV SÜD as of October 2021, with Siemens Energy being the first company to obtain a certification for its offering of an H2-ready power plant concept.
The E.U.’s goals for 2050 are rather ambitious. The E.U. – and many countries around the world – intend to have a global, carbon-neutral economy in place not even three decades from today. To reach this ambitious goal, power plants as we know them will be transformed to hybrid plants, laying the foundation for an all-new energy system. It will include energy storage, allowing steady energy flow despite fluctuating renewables, thermal storage for district heating, and heat pumps. And last but not least, electrolyzers
producing green hydrogen (H2) will also play an important part, as hydrogen is expected to be the key building block enabling sector coupling, meaning transferring renewable power to all energy consuming sectors of the economy, be it buildings, mobility, industry, or agriculture.
Future-proofing gas fired power plants
This future is already taking shape today. For example, a turnkey combined cycle power plant (CCPP) for the petrochemical company Nizhnekamskneftekhim PJSC in Russia will use 27 % of H2 co-firing by volume when it gets commissioned. A combined heat and power plant (CHP) for Braskem in Brazil, Latin America’s largest petrochemical company, will run gas- turbines optimized for burning hydrogen with up to 60 % hydrogen by volume. And the E.U. – with its ambitious climate goals in sight – directly supports the world’s first Power-to-X-to-Power demonstrator project named HYFLEXPOWER at a combined heat and power plant (CHP) in Saillat- sur-Vienne in France, with the first firing planned for 2023 demonstrating an SGT-400 burning 100% hydrogen. Siemens Energy is not only part of all these projects with its partners, but also part of a large movement in the energy industry
16 | November/December 2021 |
www.modernpowersystems.com
developing hydrogen-options for power plants. It is realistic that especially natural gas fired combined cycle power plants, which are currently being built or projected, will also be operated with hydrogen as a fuel during their lifetime, which is typically longer than 25 years. But any buyer of such a power plant who wants to ensure that their purchase is future-proof rightly expects a statement about the capability of that plant to use H2 as a fuel and its expected efficiency. Insurers in turn see an increased risk when operating with hydrogen instead of natural gas due to the lack of experience with H2.
Applicable to a majority of plant types firing H2
Therefore, manufacturers need to demonstrate to buyers, operators, and insurers of a new power plant how a transition to hydrogen operation is feasible as well as how this affects the safety, reliability, and performance of the plant. In this context, the terminology of “H2- Readiness” or “H2-Ready” is frequently used by all market players. However, until today, there had been no clear definition of the terminology of hydrogen readiness. Everybody had their own idea of what it means – enough to cause plenty of confusion.
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