NEWS
Finno Exergy advancing its innovative gas turbines technology with the help of Shell GameChanger
September 2023
Company aims to help decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors and contribute to development of hydrogen economy by making technology available to the global market.
Finnish company Finno Energy is aiming to take another step forward in commercializing its gas turbines technology after proving its functionality through a successful testing phase which concluded this spring.
With the help of Shell Gamechanger, Finno Exergy's team has validated their proof of concept and will now advance its research & development work toward commercial utilization.
"Finno Exergy has developed a solution that has shown potential to cut gas turbines’ CO2 emissions by up to 20%. In addition, our pressure gain combustion system works with any mixture of natural gas and hydrogen. This feature has potential to enable the direct utilization of hydrogen in the sectors where emissions are hard to abate, like heat and power generation in industrial applications, and dispatchable electricity generation.
For end users, like a manufacturing plant, our solution could deliver substantial cost savings and emissions reduction by improving the efficiency of energy production," says Mr. Timo Erämaa, Founder and CEO of Finno Exergy.
The essence of the innovation is a more efficient combustion system for gas turbines applications. Gas turbines are widely applied across many sectors and industries.
As the innovation is fuel-agnostic, meaning it can use any type of fuel, including hydrogen, it has potential to accelerate the transition to lower-carbon options like lower carbon hydrogen.
"We have been developing and piloting our solution in cooperation with Shell GameChanger since we won the New Energy Challenge competition in 2020 and our unique innovation is now protected by 10 patent families in Europe, the United States, China and Japan, ” says Mr. Fabio Ciccateri, Chief Technology Officer at Finno Exergy.
Finno Exergy's goal is to start the first customer projects at the end of 2023 and to achieve a turnover of more than EUR 130 million through license sales in 2027. Commercial negotiations with potential customers, including gas turbine manufacturers worldwide, are already underway. Finno Exergy is starting a new project, in collaboration with academic and industrial partners, focused on the design and test of a retrofitting package for a selected industrial gas turbine, to be used as a technology demonstrator. Shell GameChanger will continue to monitor Finno Exergy’s technology development for awareness about the progression and maturation of this technology.
For further information, please contact:
Timo Erämaa, CEO, tel. +358 500 414 225 (Finnish)
Fabio Ciccateri, CTO, tel. +39 3515 185 012 (English)
We have started testing and validiation in Helsinki with our new test rig
October
2022
Our test rig is operating at our test lab in Helsinki. We managed to burn hydrogen and methane separately and together. More test results will be published in December.
We have recruited senior designer James, senior test engineer Osmo and junior test engineer Jenni to our team together with gas specialist Kari and test engineer Pertti. We also start scientific project at Florence University by Clarissa.
Our seed round is ongoing and if you are interested to join in, please contact our CEO Timo.
Finno Exergy has completed the phase 1 of the "Shell GameChanger" program
August
2022
The project started after the victory of the "New Energy Challenge 2020" and ended in October 2021. During these months we installed on our prototype an additional power turbine and new measurement equipment. This upgrade enabled us to calculate the thermal efficiency of the system and to compare it with an equivalent ideal traditional gas turbine.
The experimental results showed the potential of efficiency improvement of up to 40% for small gas turbines applications, in line with our forecast.
We are starting next phase technology and research project at the Energy transition Campus Amsterdam from 1st of September.
AIAA Technical Panel on non-RDE Pressure Gain Combustion systems
August
2021
Heikki J Salminen, Technical Advisor & Co-Founder of Finno Exergy Oy Ltd. was invited to a 2021 AIAA Propulsion and Energy Forums Technical Panel session, among top-rank panelists from the field of pressure gain combustion and gas turbine research. The panel titled “PGC-12: Pressure Gain Combustion is not just Rotating Detonation Engines!” is scheduled for Wednesday, 11 August 12:00 - 13:15 ET (UTC-4), 2021.
Shell GameChanger program has been started
March
2021
First phase of the Shell GameChanger program has been started and the whole team is working hard to make this project a success.
Spring updates
March
2021
The team is also preparing to give a presentation in the upcoming ETN Virtual Annual General Meeting & Workshop Week 2021.
Our CFD Specialist Fabio Ciccateri will be presenting a topic “Novel pressure gain combustion technology for low carbon GT operation: technology description and experimental result” in session TC1: Low carbon GT technologies. Please check the full schedule by clicking here.
Getting noticed by the press
December 2020
Check out the article from Talouselämää about the Finno Exergy victory in the New Energy Challenge 2020.
Finno Exergy has won the New Energy Challenge 2020
November 2020
Finno Exergy claims the win in the New Energy Challenge 2020.
Finno Exergy is a proud finalist of this year’s New Energy Challenge
November 2020
For the past three weeks we have working towards the finals pitch and the project proposal with Shell. Finals day will be November 19th and live broadcast will start 15:00 CET. The online event is open for everybody. Click for registration to the final broadcast.
Finno Exergy Oy has received the “Seal of Excellence” from EU
September 2020
Finno Exergy Oy has received the “Seal of Excellence” from EU for the application of the project titled: “Pressure Gain System for gas turbines: Most efficient and cost-effective solution to decarbonize power generation and mobility industries” under the call “Horizon 2020-EIC Accelerator pilot –SME Instrument”.
The Seal of Excellence is a quality label awarded to project proposals submitted to Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation funding program. Projects which were judged to deserve funding but did not get it due to budget limits receive the Seal of Excellence.
Details related to the Finno`s presentation and Q&A session
August
2020
Details related to the Finno`s presentation and Q&A session at AIAA Propulsion and Energy Forum that will be live today.
Session: PGC-04, PGC Laser Based Diagnostics, Live Technical Q&A Session: August 24, 2020 from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM, EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME (GMT-4) – Presentation: Experimental demonstration of a novel deflagration-based pressure gain combustion technology. https://www.aiaa.org/propulsionenergy
The publication with report on measured pressure gain from Finno Exergy’s test unit
August
2020
The publication with report on measured pressure gain from Finno Exergy’s test unit, Experimental demonstration of a novel deflagration-based pressure gain combustion technology, is now available from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. See more about the 2020 AIAA Propulsion and Energy Forum and Exposition on https://www.aiaa.org/propulsionenergy.
A Finno Exergy paper was accepted to be presented at the AIAA Propulsion and Energy Forum 2020
April
2020
The event shall take place at New Orleans (USA) 22-24 of August (if corona will not cancel the event). The topic of the paper is “Experimental demonstration of a novel deflagration-based pressure gain combustion technology”. The Team is excited about this since it will be the first ever presentation at a major venue released by Finno Exergy. Link to the event → https://www.aiaa.org/propulsionenergy
There is a small but important change in the name of the company
November 2019
Finno Energy now is Finno Exergy. Exergy is the maximum useful work available from a thermodynamic system. Finno Exergy pressure gain combustion system has been designed to to extract maximum amount of useful energy out of fuel. Exergy is right at the heart of our action. Finno Energy became Finno Exergy in September 2019.
Finno Energy is presenting a poster at The International Constant Volume and Detonation Combustion Workshop
August
2019
On 17-18 August 2019, Finno Energy is presenting a poster at The International Constant Volume and Detonation Combustion Workshop organized by Pressure Gain Combustion Committee. The venue is Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. And on 19-21 August 2019, Finno Energy is attending The AIAA Propulsion and Energy Forum in Indianapolis, Indiana.
U.S. Department of Energy has published a very interesting technical report
June
2019
U.S. Department of Energy has published a very interesting technical report about applying pressure gain combustion to combined cycle power generation. The paper states that “PGC technology represents a potential disruptive change in power plant efficiency that is not achievable through standard gas turbine technology”. Read the whole report here.
Finno Energy has made various new simulations
April
2019
Finno Energy has made various new simulations of its process in different sizes and gas turbine applications. The results are excellent, and they are proving the flexibility of Finno Energy PGC technology.
Finno Energy started a project with a major gas turbine manufacturer
November 2018
The goal of the project is to show the potential of Finno Energy’s pressure gain combustion applied to their technology.
First coupled simulation with GT-POWER and CONVERGE CFD was run on Finno Energy’s digital development platform
August
2018
The simulated pressure trace matched the pressure trace that was measured from the test unit. Simulations with the new design are giving promising results about the technology’s potential.
The testing of the updated test unit has shown some really promising results
March
2018
New record in pressure gain was measured with the new setup.
Finno Energy updated their digital development
February
2018
Finno Energy updated their digital development platform with an in-house High-Performance Computing (HPC) facilities. The facilities are used to run CONVERGE CFD simulations of our process. The new HPC cluster consists of 144 cores.
Finno Energy did a major update to the test unit
December 2017
The updated test unit is now ready to be tested. The team is waiting for excellent results from the tests.