Upgrade of a 16-Stage Industrial Compressor: Part I — Development of an Innovative Performance Analysis Method

Abstract

The compressor belonging to a 165 MW-class gas turbine engine designed in the 1970’s with initial operation starting in the early 1980’s, is to be upgraded. The goal of the redesign is to develop a retrofittable upgrade which will deliver a 6% increase in flow and a 2-point increase in adiabatic total-to-total efficiency. The desired increase in compressor efficiency is equivalent to a 0.7-point increase in simple cycle efficiency, approximately. To initiate the upgrade process, a thorough performance evaluation of the existing configuration was needed using the current technology. In this case, the S1S2 prediction did not match measured performance to within an acceptable band. Therefore, a new and innovative system was developed to overcome the existing limitations. This paper presents a simple, physically sound, reliable, and efficient method for predicting axial compressor performance using a combination of single-row CFD and Streamline Curvature (Throughflow) codes. The method has been developed and tested on several industrial multi-stage compressors including this 16-stage compressor with excellent results.