Low BTU fuels operation in heavy duty gas turbines: Ansaldo energia experience

The ever increasing energy demand on conventional natural gas and oil fuels has made the need much more important to use low BTU fuels to the maximum possible both in terms of economics as well as environmental well being. To this extent, Ansaldo Energia has made a major contribution to the development of advanced technology to burning various low BTU fuels in heavy duty gas turbines. Currently, Ansaldo Energia has four major low BTU projects dealing with IGCC technology as well as various steel mill gases. Each of these projects has its own features which all in all give a wide range of experience in development and operation of gas turbine fired with low BTU fuels. The gas turbines used in the projects were all manufactured by Ansaldo Energia and were of the V94.2K type. To date the units have accumulated over 150,000 EOH on low BTU fuels. The paper illustrates the design characteristics of the combustion systems installed at ISAB Priolo 500MW IGCC plant (Italy) and Elettra Servola 180MW (Italy) as well as the development of the systems to allow the successful operation of the plants. The paper will also touch up on; (1) The Eni Power Ferrera Erbognone 250MW IGCC plant (Italy) where the syngas burner development test campaign has shown very promising results and the plant is expected to start operation in December 2005. (2) The experience achieved on Buggenum Power Plant where at the request of the customer Ansaldo has improved the current burner to operate on uniquely available syngas fuel only. Ansaldo developed a new design of the current burner. The paper focuses on the main critical aspects of the development were overcome and to highlight the state of art achieved by Ansaldo Energia in this field.