08/25/2023
Source: Energy & Management Powernews
In the Donaustadt combined heat and power plant, Wien Energie, together with partners, is testing the admixture of 15 percent hydrogen in a gas turbine for the first time. A first interim balance.
The operational test runs since mid-July this year. Since then, on individual test days - until mid-September it should be around ten - hydrogen is burned in addition to natural gas proportionately in the gas and steam turbine power plant Donaustadt. The partners - the power plant operator Wien Energie, the turbine manufacturer Siemens Energy, the Cologne-based utility Rheinenergie and the Austrian energy company Verbund - are thus gathering knowledge about the plant's operating behavior. They plan to evaluate the data in detail by spring of next year. They are already drawing up a first interim balance.
In the beginning, the admixture amounted to 5 percent by volume of hydrogen. This proportion was gradually increased to 15 percent by volume. And this with success, as the partners announced in a statement on August 24. Karl Gruber, managing director of Wien Energie, is convinced of the project: "With the hydrogen operating test, we are showing that we are not waiting for any solutions, but are working concretely to convert our power plants to renewable energies."
As the partners explain, this operating test is the first of its kind in the world at a commercially used gas and steam turbine plant in this power and efficiency class. The Donaustadt power plant has a capacity of 395 MW electric and 350 MW thermal. It supplies 850,000 households with electricity and more than 150,000 households with heat. Wien Energie and Siemens Energy had already retrofitted the gas turbine last year and prepared it for the test. Improved turbine blades were also installed, along with a new combustion system, a fuel gas analyzer and a new control system. The combustion chamber was also optimized.
Possible blueprint also for Rhein Energie
A gas turbine "4000F" is installed in Vienna. This type of turbine is also in operation at numerous European utilities: 115 gas turbines of this class currently produce energy on European soil, worldwide there are over 360, according to Siemens.
In Austria, this type of plant in its class bears the brunt of the supply on the Austrian electricity market, according to Wien Energie.
The project partner Rhein Energie also operates such a plant in Cologne. For background: the city of Cologne already wants to become climate-neutral by 2035. As Andreas Feicht, chairman of the board of the Rhine energy, explains, the Rhine energy could not reach this goal alone with its planned projects such as a Rhine water heat pump, sewage sludge burn or solar heat. Approximately half of the heat production will continue to run over existing gas power plants - "and if we want to make CO2-neutral, it must be hydrogen."
The plants for heat and electricity, which are still based on natural gas today, are the backbone of district heating for tens of thousands of people and for many businesses. That is why the transformation of these plants is of paramount importance, Feicht said. Through the intensive cooperation in Vienna, he hopes to gain many valuable insights for the conversion of gas-fired power plants to hydrogen.
Until mid-September, transport containers will continue to deliver hydrogen to the site of the Donaustadt power plant in Vienna on test days. They will be connected to a transfer station, from where the hydrogen will flow into the gas turbine via high-pressure pipelines and a specially set-up infrastructure. The project team controls the entire test process via the control room. The households supplied with energy by the power plant will not notice this process, because during the test the gas turbine generates energy as in regular operation. All operating and process data will be recorded for later evaluation.
Certification of the gas turbine as a goal
The goal of the project, it is further stated, is to certify the gas turbine for the admixture of up to 15 percent hydrogen by volume in regular operation. In a subsequent project, it is already planned to increase the hydrogen content to around 30 percent by volume. The partners are investing around 10 million euros in the test. The Climate and Energy Fund is contributing around 2.6 million euros.
"It is important for us that existing turbines also become hydrogen-capable. Therefore, this success under real conditions is of great importance to us," emphasizes Ales Presern, Managing Director of Siemens Energy Austria.
Author: Davina Spohn
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