Manufacturers of Russian compressor equipment work to enhance its efficiency. The new compressor stations are going to be more powerful and durable – this was announced at the international seminar New approaches and solutions for efficient gas compression production and automation. The discussion took place on October 2 during SPIGF 2019. The seminar was arranged by the Association of Compressor Plants and the Association of Innovative Energy Enterprises EnergoInnovatsiya.
Top manufacturers of compressor equipment discussed how new projects can extend life cycles of equipment in the gas industry. The discussion was moderated by Mikhail Smirnov, President of EnergoInnovatsiya, the Association of Innovative Energy Enterprises, and Mikhail Krukov, Deputy Board Chairman, Association of Compressor Plants.
«The 21st century is going to be the age of gas, which will be used as the primary energy source. We can see that from the gas engine fuel development and other fields of eco-friendly gas application. That’s why compressor equipment is going to be more and more in demand,» this is what Mikhail Krukov said in his opening speech. He believes that the steadily increasing share of gas in the global and Russian energy will provide a powerful boost for compressor equipment producers.
Thus, Konstantin Khabirov, Head of Department at Chelyabinsk Compressor Plant LLC, representative of EnergoInnovatsiya, told the audience that their company is working on energy efficiency enhancement of the gas compressor stations. «We produce screw compressors. These are stand-alone units with independent power supply that is totally automated. Production capacity of such unit reaches 100 m3/min, and its power is 1 to 1.2 MW,» Konstantin Khabirov explained. According to him, reduction of well capacity and, consequently, the need to enhance field efficiency is a challenge that Gazprom’s experts have to solve. Their plant tries to meet such demands.
Oleg Ernesaks, member of the Directors’ Board at Samara Aviagaz LLC, presented some projects for reconstruction and modernization of gas pumping units. «We’ve replaced the blades of the screw compressor with plastic ones, to save electricity; we installed cyclone filters, as after cyclone filtration the filters don’t need replacement, which saves fuel gas; we’ve applied an all-weather hood and some absorption cooling units – reducing the plant by means of heat utilization. This is how we make the equipment more powerful and efficient,» said Oleg Ernesaks. The expert announced that currently their enterprise uses imported adiabatic cooling systems and suggested that the members of the association considered opportunities of home production of such elements. «Construction of new stations will be completed soon, and we’ll need to reconstruct the old ones, so we have to focus on modernization and consider these solutions,» the expert summarized.
The team of INGC LLC shared their new technological solutions on gas compression, based on piston compressors. The CEO of the company presented their project «Localization of the Borsig ZM piston compressor production.» «We were the first to produce piston compressor plants in Russia. Russia has piston compressor production, and INGC is only going to set up a documentation-based piston compressor production. To extent the product line, in August 2019 INGC LLC acquired Borsig ZM Compression GmbH (Meerane, Germany). This is one of the leaders in piston and centrifugal compressor production, with a fully integrated production site, technologies, licenses, patents, and many centuries of experience,» said Oleg Bychkov, Director General of INGC LLC.
Today, an important stage of the project implementation is coming – equipment localization in Russia. Supposedly, in a couple of years, the aggregate will be 95% adopted. Thus, our country will get a state-of-the-art piston compressor, matching all the requirements, Oleg Bychkov announced.
The seminar participants shared experience in modernization of compressors, currently used in Russia. «Typical disadvantages of piston compressors include considerable weight, instability, and pulsating gas feed. We eradicated those defects – we changed their weight per a unit of power by applying low weight Mg-based alloys. We recovered instability by applying 3D-technologies, and the pulsating feed was minimized thanks to a two-way cylinder installation,» said Denis Kopachyov, Chief Commercial Officer, Krasnodar Compressor Plant LLC.
Evgeny Ibragimov, Ph. D. in Engineering, CEO of Turbo Compressor R&D Institute of Schnepp V., told about their experience of using a module compressor plant at the Yamburg Field. The report was delivered by Yahiya Guzelbayev. Moreover, Sergey Chernyshov, Key Customer Management at Caterpillar Oil and Gas (member of EnergoInnovatsiya) presented their experience of digital technologies application for equipment energy efficiency enhancement.