Baker Hughes: NovaLT

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Owned by General Electric, Baker Hughes is an international American company that strives to abide by industry standards while being amongst the world’s biggest service companies for oil fields. Baker Hughes is a huge competitor in the gas and oil industries, making products for the energy sector in several fields. It is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and run by CEO Lorenzo Simonelli.

Baker Hughes has recently come up with a new technology, named NovaLT, that aims to reinvent gas turbines. It is said to make gas turbines more efficient, reliable, and flexible, all while reducing how much it costs to own gas turbines. It only takes a month and a half to install, and can run for up to 35 thousand hours before needing maintenance.

NovaLT can burn natural gas, 100% hydrogen, and even blends of the two, without needing the hardware to be changed in any form. As far as the environmental impact is concerned, NovaLT turbines are a cleaner and greener approach to gaseous energy generation. Compared to previous technologies, NovaLT 12 had 16% less emissions of greenhouse gases, while NovaLT 16 had 35% less emissions.

Our Managing Director, Mr. Munir Godil, paid a visit to Baker Hughes to observe a demonstration of the NovaLT technology. During the factory visit, Mr. Godil had a long discussion on different subjects with the Baker Hughes team. One of the major topics of discussion was the utilisation of their new technology, NovaLT series.

Mr. Munir Godil observed that NovaLT is a very high-efficiency machine, both in terms of electrical consumption as well as cogeneration and CHP (combined heat and power). What intrigued Mr. Godil was the fact that these machines could run on pure hydrogen as well as a mix of hydrogen and natural gas, meaning the machine can use as low as 10% hydrogen as well as 100% hydrogen. NovaLT has no problem switching the ratio of hydrogen to natural gas because it has been designed to blend the two seamlessly, no matter what the amounts of both are.

Another important thing which was discussed with Baker Hughes was carbon dioxide sustainability and hydrogen production on a mass scale. These were the major issues, and then there was also an ORC technology discussion that took place with experienced technologists. Towards the end, a major discussion provided insight on the ways we could improve the processes within the steel industry as well as other petrochemicals.