Advanced Materials for Mercury™ 50 Gas Turbine Combustion System

Solar Turbines Incorporated (Solar), under cooperative agreement number DE-FC26-00CH 11049, is improving the durability of gas turbine combustion systems while reducing life cycle costs. This project is part of the Advanced Materials in Advanced Industrial Gas Turbines program in DOE’s Office of Distributed Energy. The targeted engine is the Mercury™ 50 gas turbine, which was developed by Solar under the DOE Advanced Turbine Systems (ATS) program (DOE contract number DE-FC21-95MC31173). The ultimate goal of the program is to demonstrate a fully integrated Mercury 50 combustion system, modified with advanced materials technologies, at a host site for 4,000 hours. The program has focused on a dual path development route to define an optimum mix of technologies for the Mercury 50 turbine and future Solar products. For liner and injector development, multiple concepts including high thermal resistance thermal barrier coatings (TBC), oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) alloys, continuous fiber ceramic composites (CFCC), and monolithic ceramics were evaluated. An advanced TBC system for the combustor was down-selected for field evaluation. ODS alloys were down-selected for the fuel injector tip application. Preliminary component and sub-scale testing was conducted to determine material properties and demonstrate proof-of-concept. Full-scale rig and engine testing were used to validate engine performance prior to field evaluation. Field evaluation of ceramic matrix composite liners in the Centaur® 50 gas turbine engine [1–3] which was previously conducted under the DOE sponsored Ceramic Stationary Gas Turbine program (DE-AC02-92CE40960), is continuing under this program. This paper is a status review of the program, detailing the current progress of the development and field evaluations.