Performance Optimization of a Charge Gas Compressor - a Story of Success

As most of the refineries and petrochemical plants were built 30 or more years ago and an increasing number of plant owners are searching for a new approach to maximize production throughput and reduce operational costs, the low reliability and poor performance of their equipment is a real problem that production managers are facing daily.

This article describes how compressor, steam turbine and heat exchanger equipment maintenance can be improved using effective diagnosis of the root causes that are generating performance degradation.

A case study is presented for the Charge Gas turbo-compressor train of ENI Versalis Ethylene plant located in Priolo, Italy, where recently implemented performance monitoring software “Total Train Performance Advisor” has been successfully used to diagnose compressor fouling due to polymerization.

The paper provides an overview of the performance monitoring calculation and demonstrates how such systems can be integrated with the plant DCS and Historian, so that operating personnel can easily monitor Key Performance Indicators, such as steam consumption efficiency, and plan and execute corrective actions