Repowering LM2500 plant with in-place upgrade

It took five weeks for GE to perform a major repowering upgrade of its LM2500-PE gas turbine at Cogen España's Tortosa Energía cogeneration plant in Tarragona. As a result of the upgrade, GE's customer now operates a gas turbine offering higher power output, fewer emissions and greater energy efficiency.

The $12.5 million project, known as a repowering-in-place, is a first for Spain and enables Tortosa Energia to qualify for 10 years of cogeneration feed-in tariff, while complying with the latest environmental requirements and positioning the plant for future growth as well. It took place under Spain's Plan Renove plant rejuvenation program, which incentivizes efficiency upgrades on existing cogeneration plants.

The Tortosa Energia project converted the existing natural-gas-fueled GE LM2500-PE gas turbine to the more efficient, cleaner and powerful GE LM2500+ DLE model. GE helped increase power output from 26 to 29 megawatts at 37 percent efficiency in simple-cycle mode/61 percent efficiency in cogeneration mode. GE also reduced NOx emissions from 189 ppm to 25 ppm and CO emissions to 25 ppm.

The plant's control system was updated but there were no changes to main structural items and the existing foundations were reused. The outage took one-third the time as what typically would be expected, thus minimizing power-supply disruptions to Cogen España's customer Ercros, S.A., Spain's leading domestic non-petrochemical chemical company.