Power October 2022 140th Anniversary Supplement - 14

Looking Ahead: Sustainable Fuels
While Wärtsilä has researched hydrogen
as a fuel for 20 years, as part of
its commitment to help its customers
meet decarbonization goals and limit
climate change, in May 2020, the company
set out to develop a combustion
process in its engines to achieve 100%
hydrogen fuel combustion. The company
expects to launch a power plant
design for hydrogen blends in 2022, followed
by a concept for pure hydrogen
in 2025. Paramount to these efforts
will be to add high-volume hydrogen
capabilities to its engines, which are
already significantly fuel-flexible.
The company says the development
is crucial to its strategy to " future-proof
its engine technology in line with the
global trend towards decarbonization
of the energy and marine markets. "
However, its engine power plant solutions
of today are already " future-proof
investments, since the same engines
will run on carbon-neutral sustainable
fuels, either with tuning alone or
through conversions, " the company
notes. " For the transition phase, which
we see happening through natural gas,
the cleanest fossil fuel, we have developed
our engines to operate with up to
25 vol% hydrogen blends. "
The company launched a major test
program in July 2021 after carrying out
full-scale engine tests at its engine laboratory
in Vaasa, Finland, and testing
According to a recent Wärtsilä white
paper, energy storage shows great potential
in solving the issue of degrading
frequency stability and is increasingly
being utilized by system operators
around the globe to tackle the inertia
issue. " By providing
fast frequency
response (FFR), energy storage could
compensate for the lack of system inertia
and the reduced availability of spinning
primary reserves, thereby securing
the system against sudden imbalances, "
the company explains.
The white paper describes a case
study that used a combination of techno-economic
portfolio optimization
tools and dynamic grid simulations
to study how energy storage and grid
balancing power plants can allow grids
with a high share of renewable energy
to be operated with minimal restrictions
to the generation mix. It concluded that
14
PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE
facilities in Bermeo, Spain, to assess
the optimum engine parameters for
running engines fully on hydrogen. In
March 2022, the company began operating
two Wärtsilä 34SG engines, a
combined output of 11.6 MW, that can
run on a 3% hydrogen and natural gas
blend (the hydrogen is blended before
feeding the fuel mix into the engine) at
Keppel Offshore and Marine's " Floating
Living Lab " in Singapore.
In addition to hydrogen, " other potential
renewable fuels are being studied
for future applications, and Wärtsilä
engines are already capable of combusting
100% synthetic carbon-neutral
methane and methanol, " it notes.
In 2022, notably, the company released
its Wärtsilä 32 Methanol engine
to the market. In tandem, Wärtsilä
has already proven an engine concept
running on blends of up to 70% ammonia.
It expects to have engine concepts
ready for operating with pure ammonia
fuel in 2023. A project backed by the
Norwegian government for a " longterm,
full-scale " test of ammonia as
a fuel in a marine four-stroke combustion
engine is also underway. Wärtsilä
says the full-scale fuel testing program
will be integral to paving the way for
ammonia engines " to be used in real
vessel operations within a few years. "
Several shipowners " have shown interest
in this possibility, " it notes.
the combination secured the system
during low-inertia periods. " The results
of the case study show that with support
from ancillary energy storage and
grid balancing engines the share of renewables
in the test system could be
increased from 33% to 58%, CO2
emissions
could be cut by half, and total
system costs could be reduced by 11%
without endangering system frequency
stability, " it says.
A Focus on Research and
Development
Because Wärtsilä believes a broad array
of solutions (Figure 4) will be needed
to decarbonize the marine and energy
sectors, the company has notably
committed to investing a " stable " 3%
of net sales in research and development
(R&D). The company suggests
that " different solutions will be used
www.powermag.com
4. A power-oriented pathway to net-zero.
Courtesy: Wärtsilä
in different applications and in different
geographies. " The company also projects
a gradual shift to new technologies
and blending of different types of fuel
(see sidebar " Looking Ahead: Sustainable
Fuels " ). " Our focus in-house will
remain on developing core technologies.
Through partnering with technology
providers, we are able to ensure a
broad solution offering for our customers, "
it says.
The R&D initiatives are broadly based
on projections about emerging business
opportunities decarbonization will
create for both the marine and power
sectors. As part of its " The Wärtsilä
Way " strategy, Wärtsilä anticipates that
decarbonization will fuel an " unprecedented "
rate of change in new build and
existing fleet. It said that regulations
could also accelerate change in the demand
for " green " transport.
In the power space, Wärtsilä forecasts
that the amount of power generation
will triple, and renewables will
grow eight-fold by 2050. The most substantial
growth may come in the balancing
power market, which the company
projects will increase tenfold.
" As a technology leader in the decarbonization
transformation, Wärtsilä has
significant value creation potential as a
pioneer and leading partner for decarbonization, "
the company says. While
actively involved in utilizing sustainable
fuel technologies, for both carbon neutral
and zero-carbon fuels, such as biofuels,
methanol, ammonia, and hydrogen
blends, the company continues delivering
technologies that maximize energy
efficiency when using fossil fuels. In addition,
Wärtsilä has a leading position in
power system optimization of different
generating assets, " where both energy
storage technology and grid balancing
power solutions play a key role. " n
-This article was written by POWER
staff with input from Wärtsilä experts.
POWER Supplement | October 2022
http://www.powermag.com
Power October 2022 140th Anniversary Supplement

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