According to New Atlas, gas turbines have applications in airplanes, trains, ships, generators, pumps, compressors, and a variety of other places. They can run on a variety of fuels, but about 90% of gas turbines today use natural gas, the fossil fuel that produces carbon dioxide when burned and also escapes into the atmosphere where you pump it out of the ground, and in 20 years cause worse greenhouse conditions than carbon dioxide over time. In the race to achieve zero emissions by 2050, gas turbines will need to be adapted or eliminated, and some groups, including General Electric, have been working on transitioning them to burning green hydrogen as a cleaner fuel source.
GE has more than 100 turbines that use at least 5 percent hydrogen fuel (by volume), and it says it's on its way to 100 percent.
Researchers at the University of Stavanger in Norway say they have beaten everyone by claiming they have had a 100% hydrogen-burning gas turbine running since mid-May this year. The university operates its own micro gas-fired power plant, whose gas turbines generate heat, electricity and hot water for circulating heating.
"We have set a world record for hydrogen combustion in a micro-turbine. No one has been able to produce at this level before," said Professor Mohsen Assadi, who led the research. "It will be less efficient to run a gas turbine with hydrogen. The biggest gain, though, is the ability to leverage the infrastructure that already exists." The team's research focused not only on tuning the combustion chamber for hydrogen, but also on tuning the fuel system and existing gas infrastructure to handle this very different gas.
Ultimately, such projects will lead to conversion kits that can keep old turbine equipment alive while moving it to a zero-emission fuel source. But before these things become economically viable, the price of green hydrogen needs to drop significantly as carbon taxes are applied to cheaper fossil fuel solutions.
