Hydrogen power also has the potential to be a major player in the transition to a clean energy economy.
World’s First: Gas Turbine with 100% Renewable Hydrogen
A significant advancement in the field of hydrogen power has been accomplished through the collaborative efforts of the European consortium ‘HYFLEXPOWER’, led by Siemens Energy. They have successfully tested a gas turbine capable of operating on pure hydrogen, natural gas, or any combination of the two.
The project is based at the Saillat-sur-Vienne paper packaging facility in France, which is under the ownership of Smurfit Kappa, Europe’s leading supplier of environmentally friendly, top-tier packaging solutions. The company’s products cater to businesses across diverse industries, regardless of their size.
The facility houses a Siemens Energy SGT-400 industrial gas turbine adapted to function with a hydrogen blend of up to 100%. The hydrogen is produced by a 1MW electrolyzer on-site, stored in an almost one-ton tank, and used to power a Siemens Energy SGT-400 industrial gas turbine.
Seamless Transition: Converting Gas-Fired Power Plants to Hydrogen
In 2022, the turbine underwent its initial testing using a 30% hydrogen blend. It has since made a groundbreaking achievement by successfully running on 100% hydrogen with low-emission technology. This demonstrates that converting conventional gas-fired power plants to hydrogen is possible without diminishing their performance or efficiency.
“The knowledge and experience gained from the HYFLEXPOWER project, where we installed the 1st gas turbine to run on 100 percent hydrogen, will help us to continue developing our entire gas turbine fleet for a hydrogen-based future. The interaction between electrolysis, storage, and hydrogen conversion at one site has been impressively demonstrated, and now it’s a matter of scaling the results,” says Karim Amin, Member of the Executive Board of Siemens Energy.
Image by Hyflexpower
