Two of GE Vernova's aeroderivative gas turbines, the machines bought for fast starts in peaking plants, cogeneration and more and more at data centers, have passed hydrogen tests. The company said on 10 November that the LM2500XPRESS has been validated for fuel blends with up to 50% hydrogen in its Dry Low Emission (DLE) configuration, and that the LM6000VELOX has been tested with a Single Annular Combustor (SAC) to confirm operation on 100% hydrogen. Both tests ran at a new dedicated hydrogen test facility at the company's Global Technology Center in Greenville, South Carolina. The news was presented at the Energy & Transport Day of COP31.
Two Machines, Two Combustors
The two results are not the same kind of step. On the LM2500XPRESS the blend runs through the low-emission combustor, and GE Vernova says the package still reaches full power in five minutes or less. The 100% figure belongs to the LM6000VELOX with the single annular combustor, which the company describes as the outcome of engineering work on the particular problems of burning hydrogen. The release names industrial cogeneration, district heating, data centers and grid support as applications.
The fleets behind the two models are large. GE Vernova counts more than 1,150 LM2500 units sold, with over 200 million operating hours, and an installed and shipped LM6000 base of nearly 1,350 units in about 60 countries. Across all its gas turbines it reports more than 11 million operating hours on hydrogen and hydrogen blends and more than 120 machines that have run or still run on fuels containing hydrogen. Existing units can be modified for a wide range of hydrogen content up to about 100% by volume, it says, with upgrades needed for reliable operation. For the heavy-duty 7HA and 9HA, the stated limit is 50% hydrogen by volume with the standard DLN2.6e combustion system. Earlier blend projects listed include DeBary and NYPA Brentwood in the US, Tallawarra B in Australia and Guangdong Huizhou in China.
Cecilia Giovannelli, who heads the aeroderivative business, linked the results to customers who want lower carbon emissions without giving up the quick-start reliability needed for grid stabilization. POWER carried the same announcement as contributed content from GE Vernova.
What The Release Leaves Out
There are no emission figures for either test, no customer and no date for a first commercial unit on these blends. Those are the numbers an owner would ask for next, together with the derate, if any, on hydrogen.
Anyone planning a fast-start plant with hydrogen in mind should also remember that the turbine is the easy part to certify. A 50% blend by volume carries far less than half of its energy as hydrogen, so the carbon saving is smaller than the headline percentage suggests. The harder questions sit around the machine: where the hydrogen comes from and in what quantity, how it is stored, how gas detection, ventilation and hazardous-area zoning of the package change, and whether the auxiliaries, from fuel skid to lube oil and enclosure cooling, were specified for the later fuel or only for natural gas. Plants of this type are described on our gas turbines and cogeneration pages.
Sources: GE Vernova (press release), POWER
