Renewable power generation capacities are mostly subject to inherent fluctuations. To maintain the security of supply in a regenerative-dominated energy system, flexible components must be increasingly implemented to balance the residual load. Among other options, gas turbines are eligible for this grid-serving task. However, fuel conversion in gas-based power generation technologies is inherently linked to emissions. This study investigates the impact of hydrogen deployment in single-cycle gas turbine power plants on the emission behavior and the corresponding emission footprint. The emission formation in different operational regimes is quantified by linking part load emission characteristics for different volumetric hydrogen admixing rates and time-resolved load profiles emphasizing startups, part load operation, and transient load changes. The results show that the emission species associated with incomplete combustion, i.e., CO, CH2O and CH4, significantly increase when operating the gas turbine in lower part load. CO2, NOx, and particulate matter (PM) emissions can not be assigned to a specific load condition. Due to enhanced chemical conversion rates, hydrogen admixing leads to a greater reduction of carbon-containing pollutants than the simple reduction of carbon atoms would suggest. In contrast, NOx emissions increase with hydrogen admixing dominantly via the thermal pathway. On the one hand, the environmental impact analysis shows that the impact of greenhouse gas emissions is dominated by CO2 emissions and therefore decreases with hydrogen admixing. On the other hand, the damage categories associated with human toxicity and photochemical ozone formation are dominated by NOx emissions and, therefore, increase with hydrogen admixing. The value of the damage category related to respiratory inorganics remains almost constant because the effects of PM reduction and NOx increase cancel each other out.
View full abstract