EU- Hardened Ferritic Welded S - Demonstration of a Nano-precipitate Hardened Ferritic Welded Steel Rotor in a High Efficiency Gas Turbine Target Action F: Gas Power Generation (NANOROTOR)

The objective of the project is to demonstrate the viability of a newly developed, low-cost, high technology, precipitation hardened steel, for large gas turbines, which will increase the temperature capability of welded gas turbine rotors by +50C. By increasing the temperature capability of rotor steels the additional benefits and objectives will be to: (a) Reduced cost of rotor disc hardware by 80% cf. Nickel alloys; (b) produce a simplified, flexible turbine design with reduced total first costs (by 1 %); (c) Reduce the cooling air requirements, with consequential increase in engine efficiency (by 0.2%) and reduction in CO(2) emissions (4 million tonnes per year), NO(x) and fuel use; (d) Extend the welded rotor capability to > 400 MW machines, maintaining competitiveness with US technologies and increasing EU market share; (e) Bring to market within 5 years This will have a major impact on EU policies relating to energy, environment and sustainable growth. The new ferritic alloy, which has been developed and patented by partners of this consortium, shows the alloy to be comparable in terms of mechanical and thermal performance with the highly expensive Nickel alloy 706 and now full scale demonstration is essential on a pan-EU scale in order to benefit from this novel technology.