HELIOS research group

Technology that defines tomorrow

The HELIOS project ambition is high: it will make a big leap in hydrogen combustion within gas turbines, clearly beyond the latest state-of-the-art.

About the HELIOS project

The HELIOS project ambition is high: it will make a big leap in hydrogen combustion within gas turbines, clearly beyond the latest state-of-the-art.

Nowadays, the increasing awareness of the need to decarbonize the economy has put pressure on the power generation sector to reduce their share of CO2 emissions. In this context, gas turbines are the most robust, flexible, proven and cost-effective technology especially for distributed and large-scale power generation. A proven approach to decarbonize the fuel of gas turbines, and thus their carbon intensity is to mix natural gas with increasing amounts of hydrogen. As such, it becomes essential, yet technologically challenging, for gas turbines to operate on any variable mixture of natural gas and hydrogen including 100% hydrogen.

HELIOS will develop needed technology for hydrogen combustion as a global retrofit solution for existing gas turbines. The development efforts will be based on Thomassen Energy FlameSheetTM combustor platform.

The highly complementary HELIOS consortium includes five partners from three European countries: Eindhoven University of Technology (NL), Thomassen Energy BV, A Hanwha Company (NL), Centro Combustione Ambiente S.P.A. (IT), Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. – DLR (DE), Technische Universiteit Delft (NL).