DOE Invests US$8.8 Million To Improve Hydrogen Turbine Performance

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) has committed US$8.8 million for 11 university-based research and development projects to improve the performance of hydrogen-fueled turbines. The selected projects will develop advanced materials and components that can better manage and withstand the extreme environment generated during hydrogen combustion to enable the use of up to 100% clean hydrogen in gas turbines for low-carbon power generation.

“Advancing hydrogen turbine performance is critical to increasing the use of low-carbon fuels like clean hydrogen to help achieve our climate goals,” said Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary of fossil energy and carbon management. “We are investing in cost-shared, cutting-edge research at US universities that will help make clean hydrogen more affordable and widely utilized, while also expanding the hydrogen workforce.”

Six funding recipients will perform fundamental materials research to produce knowledge, data, and understanding that can be utilized to enable improved capabilities for hot gas path component design in gas turbines using hydrogen-containing fuels:

• Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of Arizona State University (Tempe, Arizona)
• Clemson University (Clemson, South Carolina)
• Colorado State University (Fort Collins, Colorado)
• Regents of the University of California (Davis, California)
• Regents of the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
• Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (College Station, Texas)

Four funding recipients will work toward the development of knowledge, data, and understanding of the risk associated with material fatigue and thermal/mechanical stresses in rotating detonation engines operating on hydrogen fuels and strategies for minimizing the risk through material selection and design improvements that would maintain any achieved performance benefits:

• Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana)
• Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
• The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees (Orlando, Florida)
• University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, New Mexico)

Pennsylvania State University, located in University Park, Pennsylvania, will focus on applied research for turbine hot gas path components that will utilize advanced cooling architectures and advanced materials/manufacturing technologies.

DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), under the purview of FECM, will manage the selected projects. Since January 2021, FECM has committed an estimated US$147 million in projects that explore new, clean methods to produce hydrogen and to improve the performance of hydrogen-fueled turbines. These projects support DOE’s Hydrogen Shot initiative, which seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to US$1 per 1 kilogram in one decade to develop and commercialize new, clean hydrogen pathways in the United States.