Turbine Modification of Nuovo Pignone Gas Turbine

This paper deals with the environmental aspects of combustor modification on Nuovo Pignone gas turbines. The mentioned company is engaged in the transport of natural gas to the Slovak Republic and further to other European markets. Legislation considering emissions is getting stricter every year. Original Nuovo Pignone gas turbines would not be able to meet the required emission limits for NO_x and CO_r determined by legislation. Therefore, the company decided to modify seven gas turbines. Due to this reason, the combustion sections had to be replaced with a dry low emission system. These modifications were aimed at improvement of impacts of temperature on the emissions of NO_x, since the NO_x emissions are defined as thermal (there is an increase in emissions with the increase in temperature). Emissions were monitored continuously by an emission monitoring system (these data are continuously sent to the Office of Environment) and manually by a HORIBA PG-250 analyser. Gas delivery point is located in the flue pipeline, and data was processed by means of PC after reaching this point. The results lead us to conclusion that modification was an efficient and good solution in terms of economy, because this solution reduced emissions (from 300 mg·m⁻³ to 50 mg·m⁻³) and contributed to meeting of the stricter emission limits (from 370 mg·m⁻³ to 100 mg·m⁻³). Monitoring of the impacts of growing performance of equipment on emissions represents a possibility for further development of science in this field.