MSE recognises that heavy turbomachinery such as compressors,
pumps and turbines are of strategic importance and play a critical
role within your process, oil and gas power generation plants. Once
installed, these machines operate for many years without
maintenance and you expect them to deliver a continual peak performance.
Nevertheless, any
performance shortfall affects your production rates. This
results
in a reduction of both daily production and revenues from your plant. Attempts to run
these machines at continuous peak load or speeds over a long
period of time leads to the shortening of their lives and greater
maintenance expenditure for you.
However, not all machines lose their
performance at the same rate and to the same extent. The need
for their refurbishment and overhaul are not the same either.
The main problem you will encounter from operating plants with many such machines in continual
operation is identifying the machine on which you spend the maintenance dollars
since that will provide you with the best return on your
investment.
For example, with a gas turbine compressor
train operating at the maximum engine temperature limit, the
question is whether to refurbish the engine or refurbish the
compressor. What you really need to know is the
relative performance of their machines with respect to their
base line performance and where they are actually losing out
on production and cash flow.
Your
key requirement is to determine the actual
performance of these machines in situ and without interruption
to production. This is what MSE's performance monitoring
system is designed to offer you.
Your plant operator will
enter the current parameters such as pressures, temperatures,
flows, operating speeds and engine/motor power. MSE's performance monitoring
system then analyses the data and provides your operator with the actual performance levels
of these machines. This information is next compared with the
original design performance and performance loss can be
established and provides the operator with the vital piece of information
currently missing from the decision-making
process.
At preset, such decisions are made by strict adherence to inspection,
overhaul schedule and advice from the manufacturers and does not
take the performance levels of the machine into account.
With the
performance levels established, you will be able to
select from a range of options to determine your particular needs
with regard to maintenance and overhaul
costs.
The performance monitoring is available from
MSE at different levels to suit your individual needs:
-
Level I: Introductory Level
-
Level II: Intermediate Level
-
Level III: Advanced Level
Level I
This level enables you to make immediate use of MSE's performance monitoring
technology to analyse the performance of the centrifugal
compressor stages. Your operator will need to enter the following
data which is normally available from an operating plant:
The
data should be obtained from the plant separately for each machine.
Values should be taken at the same time, using a consistent
set of units. The example gives the actual data required and
types of results available for a centrifugal compressor stage.
The results can be printed or stored in files or exported to
an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis.
Level II
This
level requires your operator to enter the operating data from the
plant in the same way as Level I. The intermediate level is
aimed for plants your have all the input data from
the plant as Level I, but want to dig deeper into the
performance of the machines. This level enables you to
store both data and results in an Access database. This means
that the storage, retrieval and trending of individual machines can be carried
out on a
stage-by -stage basis.
MSE provides examples of performance loss
mechanisms and you will benefits from understanding which stage suffers the greatest performance losses and where the
performance is reasonable and close to the design. Performance
maps are provided for understanding of the operating points.
Level III
This is the advanced level is aimed at plants and
operators where performance of the machine is critical to your
production maintenance. It is a model-based system and you can
use it even where limited data is available
from your plant. By using the model the remaining parameters
can be derived for performance analysis.
This level relies on
MSE’s modelling of compressor train using GASMAN
. Your plant's model is constructed using the actual design
information of your compressor and gas turbines. Also, the number of
compressors and gas turbines follows the original process flow
diagram from which your plant was constructed.
The PMS system
is configured for each plant specifically and tested to ensure
that it models the current performance of your plant.
The model
predicts the performance of your machines and compares this with
current performance levels using the base line concept. This
provides you with a good understanding of how each machine is
performing and where the performance levels are the greatest,
and thus where your maintenance efforts should be
concentrated.
For
further details on how MSE can help you with the performance
monitoring of your gas turbines, please call +44(0)208773 4500
or info@mse.co.uk
