Gas turbines are amazing machines—both incredibly efficient and relatively inexpensive to purchase and operate. But in most electric power applications, the fuel of choice is natural gas, which produces carbon dioxide when combusted. Given that many governments around the world have set deadlines for eliminating carbon emissions from electric production, the gas turbine industry has been looking at applications where carbon is removed from the fuel or captured from the exhaust and sequestered.

S. Can “John” Gülen, an ASME Fellow who is Senior Principal Engineer at the Engineering Technology Group of Bechtel Infrastructure and Power, is an internationally recognized expert in power technologies. In October 2024, he (together with Bechtel’s Martin Curtis) published a paper in the Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power called “Gas Turbine’s Role in Energy Transition,” that examined the prospects for some of these new applications.