The Western Turbine Users Inc. (WTUI) conference is taking place this week in San Diego, California. Its audience is made up of hundreds of users of GE LM2500, LM5000, LM6000 and LMS100 aeroderivative gas turbines. The LMS100 has accumulated 173,870 operating hours with a high time unit in Argentina at 20,037 hours which runs in base load most of the time. The total LMS100 starts worldwide starts at 24,313, with 28 units in commercial operation at the end of 2012.

  GE Marine has recently delivered one LM2500+G4 aeroderivative marine gas turbine to Avio SpA of Turin, Italy, a GE Marine System Supplier. The gas turbine will power the French Navy's eighth FREMM frigate Lorraine.

  Once considered an occasional “necessary evil,” fuel gas booster (FGB) compressors in turbine power generation facilities have become a common requirement. FGBs are installed because of insufficient gas pressure onsite or from nearby utility gas pipelines. Historically, pressures up to 300 psig (~20 barA) were adequate for most industrial gas turbines and were often available onsite or at an economical distance. But modern gas turbines tend to run at much higher compression ratios, thus raising the inlet fuel gas pressure requirement.

The retrofit market for gas turbine (GT) and compressor control systems is poised for a major boom. Systems sold during the GT bubble of the nineties and early 2000s are ready for an upgrade, not to mention even older systems equipped with analog controls or electromechanical governors. Clark Weaver, Manager of New Product Introduction, Wood Group GTS said, “The average life cycle of many OEM controls are in a 10- to-15-year time frame. Some sites are one failure away from being down indefinitely and are not even aware of it.”

GE announced recently the availability of its C90 Automation Control System designed to help industrial customers quickly and intelligently manage power in their plants when facing power outages. By integrating the C90 into their existing power management system, customers can easily identify equipment and processes that are critical to their business to ensure that when the lights go out, power continues to flow to these critical resources.

Supercritical CO2 (S-CO2) Brayton Cycle is the most promising of the power conversion cycles currently under development. Similar in configuration to an ideal gas closed-loop Brayton system, it can suit both bulk thermal and the latest generation of nuclear reactors. The simplest recuperated closed system consists of a heat source, heat exchanger, turbine and generator, a recuperating heat exchanger, a waste heat removal heat exchanger and a compressor.

  General Electric recently received the patent for an asymmetrical combined cycle power plant that includes a first engine, a second engine, a first heat recovery steam generator, a second heat recovery steam generator, and a steam turbine. The plant has the productivity characteristics of a large frame machine and efficiency characteristics of an aeroderivative turbine.

MAN and Audi have geared up to create renewable fuel on an industrial scale for the first time. The vehicle manufacturer will produce and feed synthetic methane (Audi e-gas) into the public natural gas network starting summer 2013. The core component of the plant, which is being built in cooperation with equipment manufacturer SolarFuel GmbH in Werlte (Emsland region), is a MAN Diesel & Turbo methanation reactor.

  Japan's Toshiba Corp. recently said it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co. to form a global strategic alliance that the two companies would jointly develop select combined cycle power generation projects globally. The companies will also explore the formation of a strategic joint venture for the development of next-generation combined-cycle power projects having higher levels of thermal efficiency.

A computer virus attacked a turbine control system at a U.S. power company last fall when a technician unknowingly inserted an infected USB computer drive into the network, keeping a plant off line for three weeks, according to a report posted on a U.S. government website.