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    Gas-Turbine Power Generation
    Gas-Turbine Power Generation
    Gas-Turbine Power Generation
    Ebook185 pages1 hour

    Gas-Turbine Power Generation

    By Paul Breeze

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    About this ebook

    Gas-Turbine Power Generation is a concise, up-to-date, and readable guide providing an introduction to gas turbine power generation technology. It includes detailed descriptions of gas fired generation systems, demystifies the functions of gas fired technology, and explores the economic and environmental risk factors

    Engineers, managers, policymakers and those involved in planning and delivering energy resources will find this reference a valuable guide that will help them establish a reliable power supply as they also account for both social and economic objectives.

    • Provides a concise, up-to-date, and readable guide on gas turbine power generation technology
    • Focuses on the evolution of gas-fired power generation using gas turbines
    • Evaluates the economic and environmental viability of the system with concise diagrams and accessible explanations
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAcademic Press
    Release dateFeb 24, 2016
    ISBN9780128040553
    Gas-Turbine Power Generation
    Author

    Paul Breeze

    Paul Breeze is a journalist and freelance science and technology writer and consultant in the United Kingdom. He has specialised in power generation technology for the past 30 years. In addition to writing Power Generation Technologies, Second Edition, he has contributed to journals and newspapers such as The Financial Times and The Economist and has written a range of technical management reports covering all the aspects of power generation, transmission and distribution.

    Read more from Paul Breeze

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    • 5/5
      Excelente material de lectura para todos aquellos quienes trabajan en centrales de generacion termica.

    Book preview

    Gas-Turbine Power Generation - Paul Breeze

    Chapter 1

    An Introduction to Gas-Fired Power Generation

    Abstract

    Natural gas is the second most important fossil fuel for generating electricity after coal. Although it has a long history as a fuel for power generation, it is only since the 1990s that its use has soared, mainly on the back of the development of the high-efficiency combined cycle power plant. These plants are cheap to build and can produce cheap electricity if the cost of gas is low. They emit less carbon dioxide than coal-fired power plants. The commercial exploitation of natural gas began during the 19th century when it was first used for lighting. Electricity generation was initially in gas-fired boilers with steam turbines but the development of the gas turbine offered an alternative route to power generation, one that has come to dominate production from natural gas.

    Keywords

    Natural gas; fossil fuel; power generation; gas turbine; gas boiler; steam turbine; global production; renewable grid support

    Natural gas is the second most important fossil fuel for generating electricity after coal. Its exploitation as an energy source for electrical power generation dates from the early part of the 20th century. However it was in the latter part of the century that capacity accelerated alongside the development of efficient gas turbine-based power stations. The use of natural gas for power generation has continued to grow into the 21st century, particularly among the developed nations. In the United States, where the economic extraction of natural gas from shale rocks in the past decade has dramatically increased the amount of natural gas available and reduced the cost of the gas, this has been especially noticeable. Other regions are now trying to exploit the potential for shale gas, with varying success.

    While cost has been one factor driving the use of natural gas for power generation, another has been climate change. Combustion of natural gas produces significantly less carbon dioxide for each unit of electricity generated than would be emitted by a coal-fired power station during production of the same unit of power. A natural gas-fired power station can be as large as a coal-fired power station and it can generate electricity continuously like a coal-fired plant,¹ making it a good substitute for the latter. Switching from coal to natural gas has therefore provided a simple means for companies to meet climate-change emission control limits more easily and for nations to achieve targets for carbon dioxide emissions.

    While a switch from coal to natural gas will reduce overall emissions for each unit of power it will not eliminate them. To achieve that requires either abandoning the combustion of fossil fuel for power generation or the introduction of carbon capture and storage technologies to natural gas-fired power plants. The technologies for both carbon capture and its storage already exist but they have yet to be tested the scale of a large natural gas-fired power station. So, while power companies and some governments are promoting natural gas—with or without carbon capture—as a stage on the way to a carbon free energy economy, environmental campaigners generally consider it to be a distraction, sapping investment that could otherwise be used to develop more extensive renewable generation resources.

    The recognition of natural gas as a source of energy can be traced back to around 500 BC. Natural gas seeping from the ground will often ignite to create a flame but in earlier times its significance as an energy source was not recognized. More often the flame was instead considered a sacred sign. It was in China for the first time that this seeping gas was collected and transported in bamboo pipes, then used to boil sea water and produce salt.

    Commercial use of gas for energy originated in Great Britain in the 18th century although this was based on gas manufactured from coal rather than natural gas extracted directly from the earth. The modern natural gas industry probably started in the United States in the middle of the 19th century when gas was first pumped from a natural gas well and distributed for lighting. At this stage, however, long distance transportation of gas was not possible and gas was all used locally. It took the development of gas pipeline technology in the 20th century to make natural gas widely available.

    Pipelines are a key technology in the growth of the natural gas industry. The cheap, easy transportation of natural gas though pipelines gives the fuel one of its main attractions. Pipeline delivery has allowed gas to be used as a source of domestic energy for both heating and cooking, as a commercial energy source, and in industrial processes. This ease of transportation has also allowed natural gas to be traded globally, like oil, and this has led to large global and regional fluctuations in the cost of natural gas over the past 30 years. Such fluctuations can have serious economic consequences, particularly for power plants that use the fuel.

    The commercial electricity industry began at the end of the 18th century when electric power started to replace gas as a source of light, incidentally removing one of the main uses of gas at the time. This prompted gas companies to search for other uses for their product. One of those was electricity generation. The production of electricity from natural gas began during the first half of the 20th century with the use of gas in combustion boilers similar to those used for the combustion of coal. While this practice continues in some parts of the world, particularly where natural gas is abundant, it was the development of gas turbines for power generation that led to a dramatic rise in the global use of natural gas by the power industry. Gas turbine-based power plants, particularly combined cycle plants that add a steam turbine to exploit the waste heat from gas turbine exhausts, have much higher efficiencies than traditional boiler plants and are both cheap and quick to build. This has made then extremely attractive commercially. Piston engines fired with natural gas are also popular for smaller capacity

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