×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Coal Seam Gas

Coal Seam Gas

Coal Seam Gas

(OP)
Australia is going through an LNG boom, large investments have been made in Coal Seam Gas on the East coast in particular Queensland.  There will be a significant number of centrifugal compressors on the Upstream portion of these projects.  Does anyone on this site know if this technology is successfully operating anywhere else in the world?  To date I cannot find any applications outside Australia that use centrifugal compressors.  I understand that reciprocating compressors may be used.

Look forward to any feedback.

RE: Coal Seam Gas

coal bed methane in this area is usually done with a oil flooded screw feeding to a recip pushing into the transmission line

RE: Coal Seam Gas

Centrifugal compressors have three important pluses; first, they mate to very powerful (and compact) gas turbines; second, they can move staggeringly large volumes of gas; and third, they don't require lubrication to be added to the gas stream.  The big minus is that each stage can only do 1.5-2.5 compression ratios.  For a booster station, that needs to boost an 800 psig stream to 1300 psig all day every day with no significant variability in either suction or discharge pressure they are ideal.

In locations where conditions change (like a wellsite) they are much less applicable. Where the controlling factor is energy density (e.g. on a offshore platform), then people accept the limited flexibility.  On offshore applications, the compressors have throttling suction controllers to keep the suction pressure in a very narrow band (usually at the cost of having a significant dP across the suction controller and holding considerable back pressure on the wells--which leads to premature abandonment).

I like them in applications like the discharge of Amine plants, or pipeline booster stations.  I don't recommend them for plant inlet, gathering system booster stations, or onshore wellsite use.  I've seen a couple of sites with dynamic compressors (like centrifugals) installed in parallel with positive displacement compressors (like recips or flooded screws) and the result is never pretty.

In answer to your basic question, there are hundreds of thousands of centrifugal compressors in use around the world.  This is a very mature technology with a pretty limited number of unknowns.  The GPSA Field Data Book has a pretty good section on Centrifugal and Axial Compressors.

David

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources