Engineering approach for world’s largest hydrogen compression system

Engineering approach for world’s largest hydrogen compression system

Albers, N.
van Lier, L.J.
van der Biezen, M.

2018

For a large new refinery project in the Middle East, the design and construction of a very large hydrogen compression unit was required. The compression unit design resulted in the requirement for six large reciprocating compressors operating in parallel, with a total installed electrical power close to 100 MW. The compressors have common suction and discharge headers and common headers for two side streams, with each compressor having 8 cylinders in a 4-stage configuration. The scale of the system and individual compressors required a dedicated engineering approach to handle the complexity of the project. This included a torsional analysis pre-study and the development of load-balancing and service life optimization features as part of the unit control system. From a pulsation perspective, the complex acoustic interaction between the various compressor trains, all possible capacity step combinations (exceeding 10.000) and the very large size of the complete system posed major challenges. Industry standards API 618, 5th ed., and API RP 688, 1st ed., do not provide any specific guidance on how to address these challenges. Therefore a new evaluation process was developed aiming to control the acoustic interaction between different compressor trains. This facilitated the selection of a realistic amount of analysis cases and appropriate evaluation criteria. The obtained acoustic separation between the compressor trains lead to an efficient pulsation and mechanical response analysis process.

Fluid & Solid Mechanics
HTFD - Heat Transfer & Fluid Dynamics
TS - Technical Sciences
Industrial Innovation
Mechanics
Hydrogen compression systems

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a9714b76-ab7d-4913-913e-2a4a88f0c47e

868136

TNO

11th Conference of the EFRC, 13-14 September 2018, Madrid, Spain

conference paper