SWRI Shares Research Projects, Gas Turbine Decarbonization Advancements

Turbomachinery International interviewed Tim Allison, Ph.D., the Director of the Machinery Department at Southwest Research Institute (SWRI), at Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia (TPS) 2024 Houston. The director shared what new research projects SWRI is working on and what turbomachinery advancements the institute is most excited about regarding decarbonization.

TURBO: What new research projects is SWRI working on?

ALLISON: “We have several pretty exciting research projects,” Allison said. “Standing next to this turbine highlights one of our projects in supercritical CO₂ (sCO₂) power cycles. This was the Gen. 1 sCO₂ turbine that was developed with GE Vernova. We are running the Gen. 2 turbine at the STEP sCO₂ Demo Pilot Plant. We've run it this year a couple of times with the completion scheduled for this fall.”

TURBO: In terms of decarbonization, what turbomachinery advancements is SWRI excited about?

ALLISON: “I’m excited about a couple of other projects that we have. One is using turbomachinery to decarbonize ethylene cracking—we have a project for the DOE with Siemens Energy to prove out a rotating olefin cracker, or a turbo cracker, product they're commercializing. We’ll do a full-scale test of that product. We also have some projects on thermal energy storage for long-duration energy storage for the grid. But I am really excited about the trends that couple thermal storage to turbomachinery systems—think a gas turbine that's fed with thermal storage or integrates the thermal storage for another process.”