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Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air

Transport. Part 18. Advanced
Hydrogen Gas Turbines
May 6, 2022, ©.  DOWNLOAD
Leeham News: Last
week, we looked at how we create the shaft
power for the thrust device we discussed
before. We described the basics of a
hydrogen-burning gas turbine alternative.

By Bjorn Fehrm
When we have liquid hydrogen as fuel,
several advanced developments are
possible. It’s what we look at now.
 Figure 1. Airbus ZEROe hydrogen gas turbine concepts. Source: Airbus.

Advancements possible with LH2 Gas Turbine

propulsion
In previous articles, I described several concepts for how the
cryogenic (-253°C) liquid hydrogen (LH2) could be used to cool
different parts of a gas turbine. Such concepts were studied in the
EU ENABLEH2 project, Figure 2.

Figure 2. ENABLEH2 ideas around the use of LH2 for engine cooling. Source:
ENABLEH2.

Not only did the engine get parts cooled so it could run at higher
efficiency, but the LH2 was transformed to H2 gas of high
temperature (from 24K to 700K), which increases its energy
content (heating value).

A problem with H2 gas turbines is the water vapor in the exhaust.

Advanced research is now underway to gain from the water vapor
rather than see it as a drawback.

Water injection in gas turbines has been used for 70 years to

increase their thrust (the VTOL Harrier Pegasus engine needs
water injection for the hovering flight).

Water injection and water vapor recovery from exhausts to form a

closed-loop system has been used for stationary gas turbines for
decades. It was also studied for airborne engines in MTU’s WET
studies.

The HySIITE engine technology

An engine that recovers the water vapor in the exhaust and uses it
to enhance its efficiency is more effective when fueled with LH2
(the WET studies were for kerosene cores).

First, we have more H2O in the exhaust to recover and circle back
into the engine; secondly, the LH2 at -253°C is the perfect coolant
for the core exhaust heat exchanger that condensates and
recovers the water.

Pratt & Whitney’s HySIITE (Hydrogen Steam Injected, Inter‐Cooled

Turbine Engine) explores these techniques. The project was
awarded $3.8m in February from the US Department of Energy and
its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to develop
base technologies for such an engine.

The two-year program will develop critical parts of such a system,

such as the LH2 cooled heat exchanger for water vapor
condensation. The focus will be on weight, volume, and H2
combustion’s long-term compatibility.
The next phase for HySIITE would be a ground demonstrator core
where techniques such as water vapor injection in the compressor,
combustor, and turbines will be studied. The potential for
efficiency gains over a non-injected engine is considerable.

Today’s best cores are at 55% efficiency. With HySIITE, this could
pass 60%. The concept focuses on a semi-closed loop system that
is essentially a bottoming cycle (bottoming cycle = use of a waste
product from the process to increase its efficiency) designed to
recover water in the exhaust using a condenser. An engine for
airline use could be available latter half next decade.

The MTU WET studies foresaw a possibility of capturing the water

vapor and dumping it as liquid water into the atmosphere. Should
the flight trials with Airbus A380 show we have a real problem with
the water vapor causing troublesome contrails, vapor capture
technology such as foreseen in HySIITE could be a way to get to
this problem.

Conclusion
Gas turbines are highly efficient powerplants for our airliners.
When they burn hydrocarbons, they emit CO2, CO, NOx gases, etc.
Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) can compensate for the CO2
emissions in their creation phase to create a net-zero CO2
emission. Still, as it’s further processing of a hydrogen derivative
and involves CO2 capture, it costs more than hydrogen to produce.

Hydrogen for airliners is only practical in its liquid form, LH2.

Complaints are that the additional energy to liquefy hydrogen to
LH2 is wasted energy. With concepts such as HySIITE and
ENABLEH2, the -253°C of LH2 is aggressively used to increase the
LH2 gas turbine core to higher efficiencies than our kerosene
cores. We make use of the extra investment in LH2.
 We shall add the advantage of a fuel cell APU instead of today’s
inefficient and noisy Jet -A1 APUs to the above.

In summary, we will see a lot of development on how to smartest

use the LH2 if we get it onboard our airliners.

  Category: Airbus, Aircraft   Tags: Environmental footprint,

Development, Eco-Aviation, Hydrogen aircraft, Hydrogen fuel, Liquid
Environmental footprint, Hydrogen Hydrogen, Zero Carbon Aviation, ZEROe
aircraft, ZEROe

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