Jet engine and natural gas.

I am assuming the 5th word in your query is "use".

Yes, it is possible. But why would you want to when Jet A has more latent energy than natural gas and is less likely to ignite.

Yes, I helped start-up a combustion turbine combined-cycle power plant with total ouput of 4.5MW. The combustion turbine was a dual fuel - JP5 jet engine (No 1 fuel oil) for emergency or normally 200psi natural gas, the plant only ran at full output and burned as much natural gas in a day as a home does in a year. The exhaust gas from the turbine could also go thru a "duct burner" to heat it up more, to produce more steam from a waste heat boiler, then the exhaust from the boiler went to dry paper in a paper mill. The boiler output went thru a 50psig back pressure steam turbine, to supply steam to the paper mill.

In short yes a jet engine can run on (high pressure) natural gas.

It is typically not cost-effective anymore to produce electricity from natural gas. Although it may be an economical alternative to building a long power line, if you have a natural gas pipeline nearby. Natural gas availability can be seasonally restricted.

Erich:

When the petro people decided that they wanted their infrastructure to be TOTALLY independent of electricity, they developed natural gas powered, jet driven gas pumping stations. The stations were pumping their own fuel source. Pratt and Whitney engines were used in some, if not all, of the stations. As far as I know, they're still in use.

DickL

Yes, GE has been using some of their turbines on natural gas as standby emergency generation power plants for areas that need to have electric on demand. NG is not the most efficient, but, will supply the engines with clean fuel without a storage area. Some hospitals use them for standby emergency use. Good place to use an engine that the faa says is beyond the time for avaition use that still runs good and is not worn out.

Ric

Do you have any sources for those engines?

Would need to know the power requirements before refering to the proper division. Recently G.E. completed an installation in South Dakota of a 1,000,000 MW generation station and last I heard it was online and working on NG. Contact me directly at willrw1@fuse.net and I will get the info directly to you. My contact is out of town this week so please bear with me.

Thanks

I was day dreaming again. I keep thinking a used (high time) aircraft turbine would be a great power plant for a home built plane. 300+ HP. But I have never found an inexpensive source.

I also would like to contact you but for some resson I could not access your address

This is Joe M. of A.W.R.C. at chosenairbase@yahoo.com .

thankyou and any information would be greatly appreciated.

There are many turbines running on methane from landfill gas abstraction schemes.

I wish to "Thank You" all for the information; it was much appreciated. Erich

FYI - NG makes very good fuel to gas turbine especially with combustors with annular or can-annular design, GE's FA, FB and its air craft engine derivative LM being good examples. Most of the major gas turbine manufacturers provide duel fuel, or gas / liquid fuel turbine. To name a few:

- GE (as mentioned above) http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/tech_docs/en/downloads/ger3567h.pdf

- Solar (Saturn 20 through Titan 130) http://mysolar.cat.com/cda/layout?m=35881&x=7

- Westinghouse (W Series)

- ABB (GT24 etc.)

- Nuvo Pignone

- Magellan Aerospace (OGT)

In 2004, GE shipped two 109FA combined cycle power-gen package to China, running on NG. In the next year, one 209FB package was shipped to Spain, running on NG too.

As a project in my younger years, I had made a Ramjet using NGO.

Due to the pressurization, I had issues with the fuel freezing,that I worked around by creating a preheated around the combustion chamber.

Born and raised on a farm, I decided to use alcohol in stead to simplify this. It burns cooler but it also has less energy. And by doing this, and with plenty of feed stock, (corn) I was able to start another project and that was to make a still to distill my 'jet fuel'. But that's another story.

Wow this is an old thread.