Mitsubishi Power , a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Group, has started development of a 40 MW gas turbine fuelled by 100 per cent ammonia. This generates carbon-free power generation. Mitsubishi Power is aiming for commercialisation by around 2025.
This will be the world’s first commercialised gas turbine to make exclusive use of ammonia as fuel in a system of this scale.
Ammonia, a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen, is a highly efficient hydrogen carrier, and it can also be directly combusted as fuel. It is expected that early introduction of ammonia-based power generation equipment at power companies will promote ammonia’s future use as a carbon-free fuel.
A challenge that needs to be addressed with direct combustion of ammonia is the production of NOx. Mitsubishi aims to resolve this issue through commercialisation of a gas turbine system that combines selective catalytic reduction (SCR) with a newly developed combustor that reduces NOx emissions, for installation in the company’s H-25 series 40 MW gas turbines.