In the evolving energy landscape, there is growing interest in implementing non-traditional fuels. With almost two million hours in service, GE fuel technology has improved the performance of these fuels to help meet the rigorous standards of modern power plants.

A number of industry processes generate by-product streams that are suitable for combustion in power plants. For example, crude oil topping, platforming, dehydroalkylation, de-ethanization in refineries and thermal crackers, and aromatics plants within petrochemical plants. These generate valuable gases that are called “off gas” or “net gas”, and are generally mixed together to constitute the fuel gas network of the plant.

As continuous-flow machines with robust designs and universal combustion systems, GE’s heavy duty gas turbines have demonstrated distinctive capabilities to accept a wide variety of these alternative fuels. In effect, customers will be able to:

• improve power generation performance compared to steam cycles
• match the power/heat ratios of combined heat and power (CHP) required by modern industrial plants
• meet stringent reliability and availability standards placed by refiners and petro chemists.
• run over 8,000 hours without interruption
• accept other alternative fuels such as fuel oils, naphtha, C3-C4 gas, and heavy distillates
• demonstrate an unparalleled integration capability in the energy schemes of the host plant

High Caloric Value Gases

GE is helping customers find new ways to reduce natural gas consumption by blending of a process gas with their main natural gas supply. For example, industrial or petrochemical plants can utilize hydrogen-containing process gases, or 'off-gas', produced on-site to reduce plant-operating costs.

Medium and Low Caloric Value Gases

To date, more than 40 GE turbines are operating on low BTU fuels. These turbines have accumulated over two million operating hours, including over 380,000 fired hours and over 25,000 fired starts on F-class units. Given the wide range of fuel flexibility inherent in gas turbines, these turbines can operate in a variety of application spaces – including coal-based IGCC, refinery IGCC and steel mill plants.