EPSRC Gas-FACTS project

The Gas-FACTS project is funded by the EPSRC-Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. It started 1 April 2012 and involves a consortium of UK universities.

Gas-FACTS will provide important underpinning research in for gas turbine modifications and post combustion capture technologies for gas power plants. These technologies are candidates for deployment between 2020 and 2030, and will be in operation until 2050 or beyond.

The challenge with CO2 capture in gas power plants is that gas-fired generators provide balancing services to the transmission grid in the presence of intermittent loads and variable generation from renewables. Such variable operation poses great challenges for the control and operation of carbon capture on gas power plants.

Gas carbon capture is an emerging field needing research into concepts and underlying scientific principles. The results of this project give a basis for further work to extract the maximum research benefits from the UK CCS demonstration programme.

Gas-FACTS research themes include: gas turbine system modifications, retrofittable technologies, upgrading, and flexible and low factor operation.

Flexible and low factor operation

The Process Automation group and the Thermophysics group at Imperial are working in the Gas-FACTS consortium on flexible capture systems for natural gas power plants through:

• Real time control of natural gas capture systems for power plants
• Experimental testing of liquid solvents including novel amine mixtures.
• Modelling and analysis for improved transient performance.

The aim is integration of the gas turbine and post-combustion capture to achieve excellent performance over a wide range of operating conditions, to allow rapid changes in output, to give an appropriate balance between fixed and variable costs, and to give good performance at a range of operating points.