World’s biggest gas turbine
Today Thursday, 20th December 2007, the world’s largest gas turbine is to begin operating in a generating plant run on natural gas that is expected to achieve 60 per cent efficiency.
The 340 MW turbine has been built by Siemens and is installed at Irsching near Ingolstadt in Bavaria. The overall 60 per cent efficiency will come from the gas turbine being operated in combination with a steam turbine, to produce a total 530MW, sufficient power to meet the needs of a city of three million people. The gas turbine weighs 444 tonnes and produces as much power as 13 Boeing 747 sized engines. The raising of efficiency to 60 per cent – the previous best was 58 per cent - saves 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year, equivalent to the that produced by almost 10,000 Volkswagen Golf cars if each vehicle were to be driven 20,000 kilometres annually.
