China’s CGT3 Gas Turbine Debuts, Marking Full Independent Control of Small-Scale Turbines

The 3-megawatt CGT3 gas turbine made its official debut at the 2026 CSSC Gas Turbine Day event recently. This “power heavyweight”, with core indicators benchmarking international advanced levels, signifies that China has achieved full independent control over small-scale gas turbines.

Known as the “pearl on the crown” of the equipment manufacturing industry, gas turbines feature high R&D thresholds and great integration difficulties, having long been monopolized by a few developed countries. Over the past decade, the gas turbine R&D team at CSSC No.703 Institute has adhered to independent innovation, gradually building a domestic gas turbine product system with power coverage ranging from 3 to 50 megawatts.

Currently, the CGT3 gas turbine has been widely applied in key fields such as distributed energy and emergency power stations, unleashing strong momentum of Made-in-China.

To break the technological monopoly, the R&D team pioneered an integrated dual-fuel nozzle design, integrating oil and gas circuits into a single nozzle to achieve seamless fuel switching, a key demand for offshore platforms that need uninterrupted operation during the transition from diesel to natural gas power.

Facing challenges such as huge differences in calorific value and combustion characteristics between diesel and natural gas, as well as carbon deposition and pressure pulsation, the team developed intelligent fuel supply control strategies and multi-medium collaborative purging methods, and drew inspiration from the suona’s horn-shaped structure to optimize the combustion chamber transition section, eliminating pressure pulsation risks.

Vibration control, a lifeline for the CGT3 gas turbine, posed another major difficulty. The team adopted a two-pronged approach: optimizing the rotor structure to reduce vibration transmission and conducting high-speed dynamic balance tests to eliminate mass distribution deviations, successfully reducing vibration values to within design requirements.

In November 2025, the key full-machine test of the CGT3 gas turbine was carried out in Harbin, where temperatures dropped to minus 20 to 30 degrees Celsius. The team overcame cold-related challenges such as frozen water pipes, viscous lubricating oil and difficult ignition, ensuring all indicators met standards.

The success of the CGT3 gas turbine has expanded the product power coverage, enriched the product spectrum, and become another milestone in China’s independent development of gas turbines. These independently developed “Chinese hearts” are injecting sustained momentum into the country’s energy security, industrial independence and green transformation.