New high for compressor performance

GE’s Oil & Gas business has recorded an average 3% operating efficiency increase in our centrifugal compressors for most recent LNG and pipeline applications. This is obviously a tremendous advantage for oil and gas operators, particularly in the LNG sector, who need to increase plant production capacities.

Especially for GT-driven LNG and pipeline applications, where natural gas is either the fuel or the processed gas, an efficiency increase translates directly into additional production or additional gas transported for the final operator. The new technology will have a substantial impact on global oil and gas production, as illustrated by just four of the industry’s largest projects currently under development:

• The new centrifugal compressor technology completed testing in June 2006 for Qatargas II, the world’s largest LNG development, where there are six compression trains that will benefit from the technology. Our propane compression trains for Qatargas are each comprised of a 125-megawatt single-shaft GE Frame 9 heavy-duty gas turbine, a 45-megawatt rated electric motor and two compressor bodies. The low-pressure compressor is a 3MCL1403 horizontally-split casing type with two-side stream injection, and the high-pressure machine is an MCL1402 horizontally split compressor. The total absorbed power during the test was in excess of 86 megawatts.

• Enagas’ new pipeline compression station in northern Spain is another example – we are supplying two turbocompressor packages including a PGT 20 gas turbine with a dry low emission system and a PCL603/N compressor.
• Meeker Gas No. 2 pipeline compressor stations in Colorado, US using EM-driven PCL503
• And last, but certainly not least, is China's landmark West-East Gas Pipeline Project, one of the country's most critical infrastructure projects of the 21st century. GE will provide gas turbines, compressors and installation services for 12 new compression stations. The massive expansion project, set to increase the pipeline’s capacity by five billion cubic meters per year (BCMY), will include 20 PGT25+ gas turbine-packaged drivers and 24 PCL800 compressors.

This new level of compressor efficiency has been reached through the joint efforts of GE Oil & Gas experts and synergies with GE parent businesses. The development of a new set of centrifugal compressor stages and the improvement of current ones has been based on complex proprietary aerodynamic models, passing through Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and completing by experimental results obtained on model tests carried out in our internal R&D department.

For more information, please contact:

Simone Bertolo
Centrifugal & Axial Compressor
Product Line Manager
simone.bertolo@ge.com