Gas Turbines Automated Control Solution for Combustion Mapping

Abstract In midstream, there is a continuously increasing need to operate applications with greater efficiency, availability, and reliability. Business operations depend on an uninterrupted stream and plant equipment, i.e., gas turbines, need to operate continuously and safely, maintaining high operational efficiency to protect assets value and generate profits. In addition, strict environmental standards must be adhered to while still being able to optimize the assets’ performance. Aeroderivative engines (“LM”) with dry low emission (“DLE”) combustion system by Baker Hughes (“BH”), are common primary drivers used in midstream assets for their operational flexibility, high efficiency, and short maintenance outages. However, they require periodic combustion tuning, normally twice per year, to guarantee emissions compliance and to avoid combustion issues, e.g., high acoustics or blow-out, potentially affecting availability and reliability. Moreover, combustion tuning activities may require some time, and constraints of the operation may conflict with the ability to tune the engine. Therefore, BH identified the opportunity to improve the field engine availability by skipping the semi-annual DLE tuning activities. The proposed solution is a full software-based solution - Automapping - available for LM2500 GT family with DLE combustion system, capable of automatically tuning gas turbine combustion parameters to continuously keep emissions within required limits. Compared with existing solutions offered by Original Equipment Manufacturers (“OEM”) that are currently available in the market, this solution can work without any permanent CO/NOx sensor, with less complexity and costs to be managed. Automapping software includes a proprietary algorithm that explores combustion solutions, capable of searching combustion adjustments keeping emissions below desired value. Algorithm is based on some emissions models for fast emissions evaluation, not being bounded to emissions sensor response time. The combination of the Automapping software and predictive emissions monitoring system (“PEMS”) allows the emissions to be controlled when required and validates the emissions are corrected to desired levels.