PROCESS CONTROL OPTIMIZATION FOR CENTRIFUGAL COMPRESSORS ON ACTIVE MAGNETIC BEARINGS

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Date

2015

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Turbomachinery Laboratory, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station

Abstract

During the testing activities of a subsea prototype compression station in Norway, which included full load operation of an integrated vertical motocompressor levitated by active magnetic bearings (AMBs), relevant efforts were taken to opportunely tune the process control dynamics so to increase machine protection during transient operations. For such reason compressor shutdown procedure has been modified after the first testing phase in order to improve machine reliability and availability, by opportunely acting on diverse system parameters. 3rd Middle East Turbomachinery Symposium (METS III) 15-18 February 2015 | Doha, Qatar | mets.tamu.edu Copyright by Turbomachinery Laboratory, Texas A&M University Process control systems for traditional centrifugal compressors supported by oil bearings are always designed in order to minimize (or even avoid) machine operation in the surge region also for transient operations, while it is less usual to take precautions against operation in choking condition. For a centrifugal compressor on AMBs however, it is necessary to properly take into account the process dynamics and the limited AMB’s capacity to counteract external loads in the diverse machine operative modes. In the following sections, the machine configuration and peculiarities will be described first. Then the thrust balancing for vertical integrated motocompressor will be described. Finally, both the original and optimized process control logic for the machine will be described.

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