NYPA Project Demonstrates CO2 Reduction Potential of Green Hydrogen

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
September 27, 2022

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) recently concluded a demonstration project that showed decreased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions when using green hydrogen blended with natural gas to generate power.

The demonstration project, at NYPA’s Brentwood Small Clean Power Plant on Long Island, was led by NYPA in collaboration with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), General Electric and Airgas, an Air Liquide company.

While NYPA and other power companies already use hydrogen for equipment cooling, the Brentwood project marks the first retrofit of an existing U.S. natural gas facility that enabled use of green hydrogen blended with natural gas to fuel a power plant.

Green hydrogen is produced using renewable resources.

The project used blends of 5 percent to 40 percent hydrogen to identify and document any effects on the operation of General Electric’s LM-6000 combustion turbine engine and found that CO2 emissions decreased as the amount of hydrogen increased.

In addition, at steady state conditions, the exhaust stack levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide, and ammonia showed that emissions could be maintained below limits mandated by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation using the existing post-combustion technologies and with no known detrimental effects on the gas turbine operations.

The results could prove consequential for power plant operators to begin testing and using hydrogen fuels to lower CO2 output with minimal or no required modifications to plant systems, NYPA said.

In March, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey formed a coalition to develop a proposal to become one of at least four regional clean energy hydrogen hubs designated by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. In September, Maine and Rhode Island joined the coalition.