On the same day that it announced a 2011 order book for heavy duty and aeroderivative gas turbines that has hit $1 billion for North America alone, GE has launched its new aeroderivative, the gas fired 50 MWe FlexAero LM6000-PH. The machine is advertised as possessing extreme flexibility in operation, to suit it for today’s demands, and is claimed to have a start-up time from cold of only five minutes, together with a ramp-up rate of 50 MW a minute, the kind of performance that would allow it to meet fluctuations in demand in near-real time. The GT can reach 54% fuel efficiency in combined cycle mode, and in cogeneration applications, rates above 80 %.
Darryl Wilson, president and CEO aeroderivative gas turbines for GE Power & Water said “We developed the FlexAero to give customers advanced technology, leading in flexibility and efficiency, which can be shipped and installed faster than any technology in its class and can operate independent from the power grid.”
The latter is a reference to the FlexAero’s ability to operate with zero water consumption. The unit includes GE’s dry low NOx DLE2.0 technology, which reduces NOx emissions to 15 ppm without injecting water into the combustion process. The technology is said to save more than 26 million gallons of water per turbine, per year.
