Evolution of Land-Based Gas Turbines

Dear Colleagues,

We are witnessing a major overhaul in the approach taken in land-based gas turbine applications for power generation, with the goal of achieving the ambitious targets along the path to carbon neutrality. Gas turbines are evolving in different aspects sharing the common interest in flexibility. First, load flexibility is needed to cope with the intermittent nature of solar and wind energy sources. Second, fuel flexibility is essential to complement or even fully replace conventional fossil fuels, thus mitigating the environmental impact. Indeed, both contribute to defining a flexible operational mode, within safe limits. Third, size flexibility should be mentioned since nominal capacity may vary by three orders of magnitude for enhanced modularity. Accordingly, this topic relates not only to new installations, in the context of the distributed generation, but also to the existing gas turbine plants, in simple and combined cycle mode, which need to be retrofitted to be consistent with the Net Zero Scenario. All of this without neglecting the continuous effort to boost thermal efficiency, especially at part load conditions. Moreover, advanced thermodynamic cycles are promising for improving efficiency while facilitating CO₂ removal from the exhaust.

“Evolution of land-based gas turbines” invites papers dealing with the above-mentioned issues to take stock of advanced solutions and technologies for gas turbines, including, but not limited to, the following:

• integration with renewable energy sources (part load operation, cycling, fast load change)
• efficiency improvement
• alternative fuels (syngas, hydrogen, ammonia, synthetic methane, blends in general, “green” fuels, waste gases…)
• emission reduction (CO₂, CO, NO_x)
• small gas turbines for distributed generation
• retrofitting existing gas-fired plants (post-combustion capture technologies, co-firing, exhaust gas recirculation…)
• advanced and unconventional thermodynamic cycles (oxy-combustion cycles, super-critical CO₂ cycles, Allam cycle, hybrid cycle…)
• cogeneration of heat and power
• power plant modelling and simulation
• case studies of power plants at full/pilot scale
• analysis based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Dr. Silvia Ravelli
Dr. Pietro Bartocci
Topic Editors