The need for a change to energy production has only grown over the last couple of decades. Renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, hydrothermal, and geothermal, have been growing in use and popularity, but only account for about 20% of energy production in the United States. Renewable energy production is dependent on weather conditions, river flow, tidal movements, and underground heat reservoirs. Surplus energy is often produced during periods of low power demand, such as at night. Research is being done into storing this excess energy by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen could then be stored as fuel and burned in a combined cycle gas turbine to produce electricity when demand is higher.
Combined cycle gas turbines are currently used for burning natural gas, although some power plants have started to mix hydrogen into their fuel to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. This project proposes and designs a power plant that burns pure hydrogen, eliminating carbon dioxide as a product. One goal of this project is to achieve an efficiency similar to that of a natural gas turbine system, to use as a benchmark for the feasibility of the hydrogen power plant. A second goal has been to bring nitrogen oxide production down to safe emission levels. Balancing these two goals has been challenging, but an efficiency difference of less than 10% appears to be achievable. Nitrogen oxide production has also been brought to negligible levels by two potential methods: using less air for combustion, which lowers the temperature of the reaction and discourages nitrogen oxide formation; or using pure oxygen as the oxidant, which eliminates nitrogen oxide production entirely by removing nitrogen from the inlet of the system. The chemical process simulation program Aspen HYSYS was used to make calculations and design the power plant.
Future goals include an analysis of hazards and safety protocols, since hydrogen has a higher energy content and an increased likelihood of causing explosions, compared to natural gas. The profitability of the plant will also be calculated, to see if implementation of our proposal is financially feasible.
