CRGT power plants fuelled by hydrogen energy carriers

This paper reports a comparative performance analysis of CRGT power plants fuelled by methanol, di-methylether (DME) and ethanol. The study has been carried out by analysing the reforming process of these three fuels in function of pressure, temperature and water/fuel molar ratio. The comparative analysis shows that methanol can be completely converted to a H2-rich gaseous mixture at 250-300 °C and with a water/fuel molar ratios of about 2-3, whereas DME and ethanol require higher temperatures and higher water/fuel ratios. The CRGT plants based on aeroderivative and heavy-duty gas turbines exhibit a significant performance improvement with respect to the simple cycle turbines. In particular, the efficiency of the CRGT plant based on the aeroderivative gas turbine is about 55-57%, that is very similar to the efficiency of large size combined cycle power plants fuelled by natural gas