Development of Baseline Performance Values for Turbines in Existing IGCC Applications

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy has established projects to develop highly efficient turbines for coal-based fuels in integrated gasification combined-cycle applications. These fuels include coal-derived synthesis gas and pure hydrogen. The projects, with both General Electric and Siemens, have specific performance goals they must strive to attain. In order to ascertain the actual performance improvements that must be realized in these projects to reach the project goals, existing turbine baseline performance must be established. This paper will present the work conducted to establish the baseline performance parameters, and the values of these parameters. Performance parameters and values reported in the open literature will be presented. Parameters that are not available in the literature are also reported and were obtained by using ASPEN PLUS (Aspen Technology, Inc.) and GT-PRO (Thermoflow, Inc.) simulation software. A survey was conducted to obtain available process conditions and parameters related to Simple-Cycle (SC) and Combined-Cycle (CC) gas turbine performance in integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) applications that use coal as the primary fuel source. Information sources include commercial IGCC plants funded through the Clean Coal Technology (CCT) Demonstration Program, a proposed greenfield IGCC plant, NETL system studies, and other open literature sources. The report results can be employed to assist DOE in establishing a “Baseline IGCC Plant Performance Model” for comparisons with future improvements. The year 2010 IGCC performance goals include 45-50% HHV efficiency, $1,000 / kW total capital costs, and near-zero emissions. Contributions toward this goal are provided by DOE’s Gasification and Advanced Turbines programs. Contributions from the Turbines program are targeted to provide 2-3 percentage points improvement in combined-cycle performance by 2010 for synthesis gas applications, and 3-5 percentage points (total) by 2015 for hydrogen fuels. The results are summarized in a series of tables that highlight the information identified that includes gas turbine type, turbine simple-cycle and combined-cycle efficiencies, turbine temperatures (e.g., firing temperature, exhaust temperature), pressure ratio, diluents, fuel composition, ASU integration, coal analysis, emissions, and the overall plant efficiency. The turbines and plants assessed to determine this baseline performance included the U.S.-based GE 7F frame turbines at the Wabash IGCC, Tampa IGCC, and Ashtabula IGCC (Nordic Energy - proposed 2002, Ashtabula, Ohio), as well as two European IGCC plants based on Siemens-Westinghouse V94.2 / V94.3 frame turbines located at the Buggenum IGCC (Netherlands) and Puertollano IGCC (Spain).