Research Project

The CFD design and optimisation of a compressor, combustor, turbine system towards a 100 kW hydrogen fuelled micro gas turbine

Project of Cedric Devriese (PhD student)

Supervisors: Rob Bastiaans (TU/e) and Ward DE PAEPE (UMons)

Financed by: FNRS (Belgian, Wallonian NWO)

Abstract of overall work goal

Within the context of an ever-increasing share of wind, solar and emerging tidal power, the need to store energy, not only on the short term, but also in the medium to long-term to balance out the power grid will become more important in the near future. One of the most promising routes for this mid- to long term storage, is to produce hydrogen through electrolysis using excess electricity and store it. Instead of using this hydrogen then to generate electricity in a conventional, large, power plant, a more efficient route is to use it in a Decentralised Energy System (DES) using micro Gas Turbines (mGTs). Although the mGT presents itself as a promising option to convert pure hydrogen into electricity in this DES framework, several challenges, linked to the necessary increase of Turbine Inlet Temperature (TIT) for efficiency increase to make the unit compatible and the use of pure hydrogen in the combustor, still needs to be overcome. The latter research is conducted at TU/e.