Companies across the planet are dedicating increasing time, money, and personnel to finding ways to cut their carbon emissions. From both an environmental perspective and a long-term economic perspective, it makes sense. What are sometimes overlooked, however, are the “low-hanging fruits”, those simple solutions that can be done with modest financial outlays and that come with quick returns on investments. A prime example is centrifugal compressors.
Renowned for their longevity, durability, and high performance, even decades after they were first installed, turbomachinery provides consistent compression duty to air and gas plants across the world. In such cases, when functioning as they should, major investments in completely new compressors make little financial or plant process sense. Over years, however, the compression duty these existing machines were originally assigned can change. This has a knock-on effect: although this turbomachinery operates reliably, it hasn’t been adapted to function efficiently under the new plant conditions and requirements.
Design vs plant today
For plant operators, the question is what to do about the disparity between what a machine was initially designed to do and the needs of the plant today. The answer is to modify or revamp existing turbomachinery to reduce process inefficiencies. These types of technical modifications typically come under the rubric of “doing things only the OEM can do” and they can come with significant savings. In 2018, we started creating dedicated engineering teams and methods to identify plants with large compressors and a power range above 8MW.
We have estimated that 65 percent of all centrifugal compressors are incorrectly rated compared to their designs by at least 10 percent. Since compressors typically run at their outer operating limits, 10 percent of production capacity on average is simply lost, because this portion cannot be adjusted to new process requirements. It’s a scenario that could be avoided. How do the modifications work?
The process typically gets kicked-off with a “performance request checklist”, an aerodynamic evaluation of the customer’s machine. Engineers then produce a performance map, replete with new operating conditions. They then provide a quotation for a revamp, which substantially lowers energy and CO2 costs. The revamps can be done to a machine in the field in several ways, such as by changing the impeller size, adding an inlet guide vane (IGV), or the removal of a stage.
Reduces energy and carbon footprint
The return on investment is swift, around 12 months. Field research shows that by consuming 100 kWh less energy every day can decrease annual electricity costs by EUR 160,000 and the carbon footprint by 196 tons. And by consuming 500 kWh less energy every day can decrease annual electricity costs by EUR 800,000 and the carbon footprint by 980 tons.
This “low-hanging fruit” solution fine-tunes an existing machine, and it comes with significant benefits. For a comparatively limited investment, plant owners get greater efficiencies, a quick return on investment, and lower energy costs, which, importantly, reduces a company’s carbon footprint.
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