Accelerating Decarbonization: Takasago Hydrogen Park

Enabling decarbonization while maintaining the high reliability of gas turbines

There is growing interest in power plants to decarbonize from natural gas to hydrogen and achieve carbon neutrality in the upcoming decades. Takasago Hydrogen Park, located at Mitsubishi Power’s Takasago Machinery Works is the world’s first center for the validation of hydrogen-related technologies. The H-25 gas turbine, a 100% hydrogen-fired 30-40 MW class gas turbine, will undergo verification in the Takasago Hydrogen Park to reduce the risks associated with hydrogen combustion. The validation will also include the intelligent solution suite TOMONI_®, which was developed based on Mitsubishi Power’s long experience and expertise in the operation and maintenance (O&M) of power plants.

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Takasago Hydrogen Park – A comprehensive technical verification of hydrogen production, storage, and power generation

Established by modifying and expanding the existing validation facility T-Point 2, Takasago Hydrogen Park is the world’s first complex that can validate the full value chain of hydrogen production, storage, and power generation. When developing new gas turbine technologies and digital solutions, Mitsubishi Power undergoes long-term operation of at least 8,000 hours of validation at T-Point 2, equivalent to nearly one year of normal operation. The facility is connected to the local grid, just like a real power plant, allowing the identification of potential risks and addressing them in a timely manner. Validation tests will be conducted in the same way for hydrogen power generation at Takasago Hydrogen Park.

Accelerating decarbonization to be achieved with highly reliable 100% hydrogen combustion

Takasago Machinery Works consists of four facilities including R&D, design, manufacturing, and validation. These facilities make it possible to promptly analyze validation results and make improvements. Under Mitsubishi Power’s development philosophy of “investing in time for high reliability,” we aim to complete the validation of 100% hydrogen combustion for the H-25 gas turbine in 2024 and commercialize it by 2025. Validation testing allows us to eliminate risks for first-time products greatly reducing post-delivery problems and resulting in an acceleration of the decarbonization of the customer’s power plants.

Proven technical expertise and product reliability to reduce the risks associated with hydrogen combustion

One of the risks of hydrogen-fired gas turbines is “flashback.” Flashback is a phenomenon in which the flame in the combustor travels “back” up the fuel through the combustion systems during combustion. Hydrogen is a highly combustible fuel that is prone to flashback, which increases the risk of damaging not only the combustor but also the gas turbine itself. To avoid this risk, Mitsubishi Power has developed an upgraded type of multi-cluster combustor with a higher number of fuel-feeding nozzles, each of which has a smaller opening than standard nozzles. Fuel is injected more finely and in smaller amounts, dispersing the flame to avoid flashback. At Takasago Hydrogen Park, not only the risk of flashback, but also gas turbine combustion pressure fluctuation and NOx emissions will be validated to enhance product reliability.