POWER September 2014 - 60

GAS POWER
3. Heating up. General Electric's new J920 FleXtra engine is one of its newest, most efficient
offerings. This one will power a combined heat and power plant in Germany. Courtesy: GE
stage turbocharged engine, can achieve electrical
efficiencies up to 48.7% at 50 hertz.
The first one was delivered in July to E.ON
Hanse Wärme GmbH's Stapelfeld CHP plant
in Germany, which will be E.ON's largest
engine-powered CHP plant in the country
(Figure 3). GE and E.ON have developed an
innovative CHP system for this engine that
achieves total system efficiency of approximately
95%. The 60-Hz version of the J920
FleXtra, with a capacity of 8.6 MW, became
available in North America this summer.
Smaller Jenbacher engines are powering other
CHP projects in the U.S. and elsewhere. GE
announced in July that it would be supplying a
13.125-MW CHP plant in Merida, Mexico, employing
three turbocharged J624 gensets. The
plant will supply power to the grid and process
steam to an adjacent manufacturing plant.
GE has also been pursuing a new niche
whopping 38 of them. The Al Manakher plant
will be followed by another Jordanian project,
albeit about half the size, that Wärtsilä is supplying
for AES and Mitsui.
Wärtsilä is still developing smaller plants
and is aggressively pursuing roles that are
ill-suited for gas turbine-based plants. Its
new 20V32TS engines are a two-stage turbocharged
version of its 32 series designed specifically
for extreme ambient conditions. One
of the first deliveries is for a 47-MW captive
power plant at a cement factory in the mountains
of western Saudi Arabia. Temperatures
at the site-which is at an elevation of 1,000
meters-can reach 50C in the summer. Such
an environment will challenge gas turbines,
but turbocharged engines like the 20V32TS
can handle them with relative ease.
Double Duty
Combined heat and power (CHP), or cogeneration,
has been a familiar niche that reciprocating
engines-mostly diesel-have helped
fill. But as smaller gas turbines have begun
competing with diesel as liquid fuel prices
have skyrocketed, gas-fired engines are not
giving up their turf.
General Electric's (GE's) Jenbacher line
from its Distributed Power division has long
been a cogeneration workhorse, but recent
advances have made it more competitive than
ever. The new J920 FleXtra, a 9.5-MW two4.
Down on the farm. This 2-MW Cummins C2000 N5C genset runs on biogas produced
from an anaerobic digester at a farm in the eastern UK. Courtesy: Cummins
for engine-based CHP systems, one that employs
a form of carbon dioxide (CO2
) capture.
But while larger carbon capture projects are
looking for ways of sequestering CO2
, such
as via enhanced oil recovery, GE's solution
employs it for a more basic function: growing
plants. The first such system is in operation
at a tomato farm in California, supplying
electricity for farm operations, and heat and
CO2
for the greenhouses. (For more on this
innovative project, see " Tomato or To-mahto?
GE Gas Engines Do Triple Duty in California
Hothouse " in the October 2012 issue
of GAS POWER, online at powermag.com.)
Waste Not
It's not just natural gas seeing increased use in
reciprocating engines. As biogas and landfill
gas are being increasingly captured and used,
gas engines are often the first choice for power
generation because of their flexibility and tolerance
for a wide range of fuel qualities.
GE recently supplied 10 Jenbacher engines
to power the largest landfill gas plant
in France, the 17.3-MW Electr'od cogeneration
plant in Plessis-Gassot, outside Paris,
which was built by Clarke Energy. The
new plant replaced an old, inefficient steam
boiler and turbine system, and supplies district
heating to buildings in the town center.
Power output was increased by 5 MW, and
overall efficiency was nearly doubled. GE
and Clarke Energy also recently partnered
on a project in the UK to upgrade several
landfill gas plants operated by waste management
company Biffa.
Though it has made a major-and highly
successful-push to introduce its gas-fired vehicle
engines for fleet use in the U.S., Cummins
is also focusing on power generation. It recently
supplied the prime mover for an anaerobic digestion
plant in the UK. The project at the Nocton
Fen Farm in Lincolnshire employs a 2-MW
60
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POWER September 2014

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