Industry Milestone: GE’s Heavy Duty Gas Turbines Surpass Two Million Fired Hours on Low Carbon-Intensity Fuels

• Waste Fuels from Industrial Operations Like Steelmaking Produce Power with Zero Incremental CO2 Emissions
• Power from Coal Gasification Enables Future Generations of Low Carbon Coal-Fired Plants
• GE Low-Carbon Technologies Demonstrate Maturity, Reliability and Affordability

GE’s (NYSE: GE) fleet of 47 heavy duty gas turbines operating on low British thermal unit (BTU) fuels has accumulated more than two million fired hours, an operational milestone that underscores GE’s commitment to developing specialized solutions that meet the demands of today’s evolving energy industry. 

Low BTU, or low calorific value fuels have significantly less heating values than natural gas. Examples include syngas, steel mill gases, and dilute natural gas. These fuels are lighter than natural gas and have less energy per unit volume. 

The fuel flexibility inherent in GE’s B, E, and F-class turbines has allowed these units to operate on low BTU fuels in a variety of applications, including integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC), refinery-based IGCC, and steel mills.

“In a carbon-constrained environment, the technology trend is for combustion systems capable of burning syngas and other nontraditional fuels while also delivering the required operability. In this context, the strong operational experience gained by GE gas turbines with a wide variety of fuels creates favorable prospects, both for robust E-class machines and for F-class machines that deliver high performance,” said Paul Browning, president and CEO – Thermal Products for GE Energy.

To achieve the same heat input as natural gas fired units, low BTU fuels need increased fuel flow. This flow rate requires the fleet to use GE’s Multi Nozzle Quiet Combustion (MNQC) and Standard (single nozzle) syngas combustors, which provide robust and reliable operation on low BTU fuels.

The hours accumulated by the fleet includes projects totaling more than 4 gigawatts of installed power generation capacity at 21 plants. One million of those hours have been achieved on GE’s E-class turbines. Roughly 600,000 hours have been accumulated on GE’s B-class while the remaining 400,000 hours were amassed on the F-class.  Some of the turbines have been running on syngas or other fuels for more than a decade including a large coal-based IGCC facility in Florida and an Italian refinery.   Others are newer installations operating at locations in the United States, Germany, Italy, Canada, Netherlands, Czech Republic, China, Middle East, and Singapore.

A case in point is the Wuhan Iron & Steel Group Corp. (WISCO) steel mill near Wuhan City in Hubei Province, China. To comply with China’s goals to reduce energy consumption and emissions, WISCO installed a combined-cycle power plant—powered by two GE 9E Gas Turbines—at the Wuhan mill.

Reusing the mill’s own “blast furnace” and “coke oven” waste gases (BFG and COG) as “free” fuel, the two GE 109 combined-cycle systems each generate 164 megawatts of onsite power to support the mill’s activities. Currently, the power plant’s annual output is 1 billion kWh/a, with a guaranteed electrical efficiency greater than 42 percent (LHV). 

The key benefits of this project for WISCO include a reduction in emissions associated with the waste gases created during the steel production process and new revenues generated by the sale of some of the power plant’s electricity to the local grid.

GE’s fleet of heavy duty gas turbines operating on low BTU fuels continues to grow, as customers look to do more with less.   

GE Heavy Duty Gas Turbine Hours Fired on Low BTU fuels:

Experience by frame:

• 1 million hours on GE E-class turbines.
• 600,000 hours on GE B-class turbines.
• 400,000 hours on GE F-class turbines.

Experience by application:

• 450,000 hours at coal-based IGCC facilities.
• 860,000 hours at refineries.
• 700,000 hours at steel mills.

Experience by region/country:

• 250,000 hours at facilities operating across Asia.
• 280,000 hours at facilities operating across North America.
• More than 1 million hours at facilities operating across Europe.