Site news 10.10.2011October, 10th 2011, Rybinsk. – NPO Saturn has completed the design and development phase working on the R&D government contract “Development of design technologies for a marine gas-turbine engine having a full life of up to 100 thousand hours and power of up to 8 megawatts (based on the 4th-generation gas-turbine engine developed on the government order) and a gas-turbine power unit based on the 8 megawatt marine (ship) gas-turbine engine.
According to the contract provisions, in the period from July 2009 to September 2011 NPO Saturn had to develop a dual-fuel (gas/liquid fuel) gas-turbine engine delivering 8 megawatts of power. The technical specifications stipulated requirements to switching from one fuel to the other without shutting down the gas-turbine engine and without adapting it.
At the end of 2010 the engine prototype started its first tests. During the year NPO Saturn conducted the entire cycle of testing including operability checks of the gas-turbine engine running on liquid and gas fuel, prototype thermal behavior and performance evaluation, engine start checks, maneuverability checks and thermal state evaluation of the main engine components using each fuel separately. All the engine test results have demonstrated full compliance with the customer-specified design requirements.
For the first time for a marine gas-turbine engine for igniting in the combustion chamber a plasma-jet ignition system was used ensuring fail-safe ignition on both gas and liquid fuel and allowed to reduce the number of the engine dressing components.
The pollutant emission test (NOх) on the newly developed combustion chamber demonstrated compliance with the customer requirements while the amount of pollutant emission during the engine runs on diesel fuel was considerably lower than the emission level of conventional diesel engines (according to the MARPOL 73/78 international convention diesel engines will meet the same requirements only by 2017).
The gas-turbine engine local control system incorporating a liquid-fuel automatic control unit and a gas-fuel automatic control unit was tested. A high level of the gas-turbine engine control automation was reached; before starting the engine the operator selects the type of fuel, everything else from start to shutdown is automatic.
All the gas-turbine engine operation-enabling systems are manufactured by the subcontractors in explosion-proof design and marine-application design and have certificates issued by the Rosgortekhnadzor industrial safety agency and the Marine Register.
In the process of commissioning, the customer received the design documents and the operational tested prototype. The tests were conducted in accordance with the customer-approved test program and witnessed by the customer. In parallel the gas-turbine engine was demonstrated to the representatives of the Marine Register; the design documents and tested prototype were approved by the Marine Register.
According to NPO Saturn CEO Ilya Fedorov, “developing the 8 megawatt dual-fuel marine gas-turbine engine is a big event for both NPO Saturn and the entire Russian engine-building industry. We hope this new Russian development will see industrial production. In the course of the development campaign we have obtained a tremendous research and engineering experience that we will use in the future design and development of industrial gas-turbine engines”.
