GAS TURBINE & RECIPROCATING ENGINE

DECISIONS UPDATE 

August 2018

Table of Contents

• Gas Turbine Owners, Suppliers, Market Researchers and Publishing Companies Need to Work Together to provide lowest Total Cost of Ownership Solutions

• How large is the Market for Gas Turbine CFT Products and Services?

• Third Party Operators and LTCOV

• ITOCHU Annual CFT Purchases

• Doosan increasingly expanding O&M Role

• Centrifugal, Reciprocating or Screw Compressors for Fuel Gas Boosting

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Gas Turbine Owners, Suppliers, Market Researchers and Publishing Companies Need to Work Together to Provide Lowest Total Cost of Ownership Solutions

Gas turbine owners want to buy the equipment and consumables with the lowest total cost of ownership (LTCO). Suppliers would like to validate that their products are the LTCO choice. Publishers and conference organizers would like to be facilitators to communicate the relevant information.  Market researchers need to understand the LTCO options in order to make relevant forecasts and properly advise clients.

McIlvaine has two services relative to gas turbine combust, flow, and treat. One tracks the projects and forecasts the markets.  The other provides insights for decision making and market forecasts.  This Update is part of that service.

The purpose of this service is to identify and classify the product and service options which will impact the market. This can best be done with leveraging the Industrial Internet of Wisdom. This in turn means interconnection between knowledge resources and the personnel at supplier, operator, consulting, and market research companies.

The traditional print magazines are now building blogs and on line access to archives which provides valuable knowledge. The challenge is to make this available as needed. A continuous trial by Jury could be used as an explanation of how the IIoW can be leveraged. 

The Jury is the purchaser. The prosecutor would be the supplier trying to validate that his product has the lowest cost of ownership. The evidence to be introduced would be papers and case histories. The defendants would be the competitors. The counts would be the supplier claims as to why they have the LTCO.  Another analogy is the class action vs individual law suit. The supplier will want to make a case for all purchasers (class action) and then a case for each individual purchaser based on site specific factors. 

One difference to a trial is that the lowest total cost of ownership validation (LTCOV) has to be continuous. New process or product developments have to be continually addressed. Expert witnesses are needed.  Organized compilation of the evidence is needed.  The prosecutor (supplier) needs to assemble the facts and then display a series of decisive classifications which lead to the conclusion desired.

There is a major role for market researchers in civil trials. The McIlvaine Company has been an expert witness in cases involving theft of intellectual property and disputes over monopolistic practices.  All these cases involved the decisive classification of options, ramifications and forecasts for the revenue implications.  In some cases weeks or even months of review of the evidence and options was necessary to prepare forecasts to be used relative to damages claimed.

Just as the plaintiff in a civil trial must spend the money to assemble the evidence and present it, we believe that the suppliers are the ones to spend the money to provide the interconnection between available knowledge and the people who need to use it to make the LTCOs.  The immediate and convenient access to the relevant factors substantiated by background data should be organized by the suppliers. Their websites should provide the detailed links to the relevant blogs and papers appearing on publisher sites.

Power Engineering has now switched to an online format with extensive use of blogs with valuable information.  For example it has published the first of a three part analysis by Brad Buecker now with Chemtreat and formerly with consulting and operating companies. https://www.power-eng.com/articles/2018/08/better-chemistry-at-combined-cycle-and-co-generation-plants-part-i.html

Brad has a wealth of experience in gas turbine power plant processes including treatment chemical options. In this current blog he advises that the serious potential for FAC needs to be addressed by continuous on-line sampling. This includes critical parameters such as iron and copper. He asserts that non-phosphorous cooling tower chemistry is evolving to mitigate discharge issues and offer better corrosion and scale protection.

You can search under “chemicals” on the Power Engineering Website and find a number of articles including the following by Brad in February 2018.  https://www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-122/issue-2/features/maintaining-high-combined-cycle-hrsg-efficiency-and-reliability.html

Combined Cycle Journal has a very effective archives link to view articles such as one written about amines based on a 2017 Users meeting. Amines—both neutralizing and filming, as well as proprietary filming products—have the potential to reduce corrosion in heat-recovery steam generators (HRSGs), condensers steam and cycle chemistry.

http://www.ccj-online.com/neutralizing-amines-filming-products-show-promise-for-protecting-critical-equipment-against-corrosion/

The University of Illinois hosts an annual Electric Utility Chemistry Workshop.  Here is the program for 2018.

Tuesday, June 5

Wednesday, June 6

Thursday, June 7

These and past presentations provide valuable knowledge. It would be desirable for these papers to be available for use in decision systems with proper compensation for the organizers.

Associations such as EPRI are important information sources. DOE and EPA in the U.S. and their counterparts in other countries are also information sources. Gas turbine users’ groups and component user groups such as HRSG Users are also information sources. They hold annual meetings. Last February there were a number of good papers at the HRSG Users meeting, e.g.

• Steam Chemistry Basics.
• HP Valves and Attemperators
• SCR Catalyst- Regeneration or Replacement
• HRSG User's Experience with Film-Forming Amines

Preliminary discussions with this group were positive relative to working with the industry to interconnect the conference with a continuing IIoW program.

A company such as Chemtreat can set up a website and provide links to the blogs and archives as well as conference papers. Since Chemtreat is part of Danaher with Hach, Pall, and McCrometer the website can cover other CCJ postings such as a number of articles under Hach and Pall including http://www.ccj-online.com/archives/2q-2011/western-turbine-users/. They include access to articles on varnish removal dating back to 2006 http://www.ccj-online.com/options-for-preventing-eliminating-varnish-in-hydraulic-lube-oil-systems/

The service that suppliers  can provide is make total cost of ownership analyses and then link to the various publisher websites to validate the analysis with background data.  The McIlvaine role is to make Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) forecasts based on the LTCOVs of the various suppliers for each product

How large is the Market for Gas Turbine CFT Products and Services?

Sales of combust, flow, and treat products and services for gas turbine power plants will exceed $80 billion this year. This is the latest forecast in 59EI Gas Turbine and Reciprocating Engine Supplier Program.

This forecast does not include the gas turbines, steam turbines or HRSGS but does include all the valves, pumps, piping, filters, emission control and other products. It includes the instrumentation and the process management software. It includes the repair and replacement of all these components as well. It includes consumables such as inlet air filters and water treatment chemicals. GTCC plant owners will spend $1.4 billion this year just for corrosion and scale inhibitors. 

The details on this market are covered in a McIlvaine YouTube analysis https://youtu.be/OBeeTfWgb9A

Third Party Operators and LTCOV

Suppliers of systems and third party operators have an incentive to prepare LTCO analyses for every product and service used in a gas turbine systems. Third party operation is expanding and will accelerate the adoption of IIoT and Remote O&M. Large plant suppliers such as MHPS and Doosan are moving into remote monitoring and operational support. ITOCHU/NAES is now operating hundreds of plants.

ITOCHU/NAES can play a pivotal role in creation of LTCOVs. They are an owner, third party operator and supplier.  They are involved in power plants around the world. Their annual purchases are over $1 billion.

ITOCHU Annual CFT Purchases

ITOCHU is one of the largest Japanese sogo shosha (general trading company). Among Japanese trading companies, it is distinguished by not being descended from an historical zaibatsu group, but by the strength of its textiles business and its successful business operations in China. It has six major operational divisions specializing in textiles, metals/minerals, food, machinery, energy/chemicals and ICT/general products/real estate.

ITOCHU was ranked 215th on 2017's list of Fortune Global 500 companies with an annual trading revenue of 44.65 billion USD.

ITOCHU is a member of the Mizuho keiretsu, which at one time was the largest bank in the world and holds $1.8 trillion of U.S. debt.

Machinery Division

The company's Machinery Company segment consists of three divisions: The Plant Project, Marine & Aerospace Division, the Automobile Division, and the Construction Machinery & Industrial Machinery Division. It develops businesses in a range of fields, including electric power generation, petrochemicals, bridges, railways and other infrastructure related projects, aircraft, ships, automobiles, construction machinery, industrial machinery and other businesses related to machinery, and healthcare businesses.

It offers Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) services, finance structuring capacity, investment and coordinating functions among stakeholders for projects in the field of oil, gas and petrochemicals; power generation and transmission, and social and transportation infrastructure, such as railways, bridges and ports. It focuses on the business field of water and environmental related projects, which include seawater desalination facilities and power generation from geothermal sources, wind, biomass or waste.

The company is engaged in various aspects of power generation projects, such as Independent Power Producer (IPP) businesses, developing and investing in power generation that utilizes renewable energies, such as geothermal, wind power, biomass and Energy from Waste.

The company focuses on pursuing projects relating to oil and gas development and production, refineries, liquefied natural gas (LNG), the petrochemical industry and energy infrastructure. It focuses on various functions, which range from project identification/formation, EPC, financing structuring, coordination of raw materials supply and off taking of final products, structuring international consortia and project investment. It intends to focus on desalination, water supply and sewage projects. It caters to railways, roads, bridges, ports, airport facilities and other forms of social infrastructure.

NAES

•  In 2001 ITOCHU purchased NAES Corporation (headquartered in Issaquah, Washington). NAES is the largest third party power plant O&M services provider in the United States and worldwide. NAES currently provides O&M services to over 120 power plants in the United States and has the track record to provide O&M services totaling 254 power plants (approximately 72 gigawatts of power generating capacity) in 12 countries. In addition, NAES provides engineering and consulting services to the power industry and fabrication, maintenance and construction services to the power, oil & gas, petro-chemical, and pulp & paper industries.
  

• Recently, NAES acquired PurEnergy LLC (headquartered in New York), a provider of power plant operations and maintenance services and asset management services.
  

• PurEnergy has deep expertise and track records, not only in power plant O&M services, but also in asset management services, wherein the company manages power plant operation, including contract management of power purchase, fuel supplies and other financial agreements. PurEnergy currently provides power plant O&M services to 14 plants in the United States and Canada, and asset management services to 20 plants in the United States. Through this acquisition, NAES will be able to cater to a wider variety of customer needs by benefiting from PurEnergy's capabilities about asset management as a way to optimize the reliability and efficiency of power plant assets, while expanding customers in the power plant O&M services fields.
  

• Through its diversified industry network, ITOCHU plans to further enhance the business value of its portfolio companies in the power industry in the United States where the demand for electricity is projected to increase steadily.

NAES Corporation recently has assumed the care, custody and control of 830 MW GTCC Hunterstown Generating Station near Gettysburg, PA. “NAES has consistently delivered the kind of operational excellence that aligns with our vision of modernizing America’s power generation by leveraging global technology and strong partnerships,” said Mark McDaniels, Asset Manager at CPV who oversees O&M at Hunterstown. “This agreement reflects our confidence in NAES’s ability to optimize Hunterstown’s performance.”

In this case the owner is relying on NACE to leverage global technology. This would imply that NAES is compiling the LTCO on each product and service.  It would seem logical for NAES to create its own decision system for LTCO of plants and incorporate the LTCO data on products from the suppliers.

Doosan increasingly expanding O&M Role

As Doosan expands its O&M role there is the need to determine the LTCO of various components. With remote monitoring this task is being made easier.

Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction has begun a drive to expand its power plant service business by integrating power plant engineering, which has been conventional manufacturing, with the latest information and communication technology (ICT). The company announced the opening of the new Software Center at its Seoul Office, following on from the launch of its Remote Monitoring Service Center (RMSC).

The RMSC and the Software Center collect and analyze the streams of big data generated by power plant operation, as part of a process that is expected to enhance plant availability and optimize operational efficiency.

The RMSC, located at the company's Changwon Headquarters, is equipped with an early warning system for abnormal operational conditions, and a real-time monitoring system. Via an exclusive telecom network, the center receives data on core facilities’ operations from the control center of a power plant in real time, and instantly provides an optimized solution in the event of a problem.

By processing the massive amount of accumulated data received through the RMSC, the software center provides information and solutions that can improve the technical design of power plants, enhance operational efficiency, and provide an advanced repair service.

Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction aims to win projects to provide a long-term maintenance service for three to four power plants in Korea within the year, and plans to make inroads into overseas markets, including Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia.

Chairman & CEO Geewon Park of Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction stressed that, "The integration of ICT and power plants is a new challenge for the company which will expedite our future growth. Through the ICT-based RMSC and the Software Center, we expect to not only increase our customer value but also to expand our service markets."

Starting from RMS implementation for the Yeongwol Cogeneration Plant in 2012, I&C has expanded RMS service to the Yangju Cogeneration Plant, Hanam Cogeneration Plant and to the Dangjin Thermal power plant.

In 2017, operation data of gas turbines in the Dongtan 2 Cogeneration plant is monitored in real-time in the DHI RMS center. I&C has implemented an early warning system, Turbine rotor vibration analysis system, Turbine start-up analysis system, etc. and also built big data analysis environment for DHI products and  continues to significantly contribute to DHI’s power generation service expansion.

Centrifugal, Reciprocating or Screw Compressors for Fuel Gas Boosting

A fuel gas boosting compressor is important for gas turbine power plants because if the fuel gas compressor fails, the gas turbine power plant stops entirely.

As a result, compressors are critically important for reliable gas turbine power plant operation. At the same time, the demands on compressors have been increasing because gas turbines require higher fuel gas pressures to achieve increased performance efficiency and because pipeline pressures fluctuate due to increased overall and peak demand requirements. Therefore, selecting the correct type of fuel gas compressor is one of the most important factors in achieving successful plant operation. These observations were made 10 years ago by Takao Koga of Kobelco.

 Gas turbines require a certain pressure of fuel gas to combine the fuel gas and pressurized air before combustion. Historically, when main pipelines were built the gas pressure was adequate. Normally, the gas pressure was reduced from this high pipeline pressure and delivered at the gas turbine’s required pressure. In the North American market, fuel gas compressors were not often required.

However, as higher efficiency gas turbines were developed, the required gas pressure kept increasing. The required gas pressure for conventional types of industrial gas turbines is around 250 to 300 pounds per square inch gauge (psig), or 17.5 to 21 barG on average. However, the latest generation of industrial gas turbine requires relatively high pressure gas, such as 500 to 600 psig (35 to 42 barG). In addition, aeroderivative-type gas turbines now require gas pressure as high as 700 to 1,000 psig (49 to 70 barG).

At the same time, natural gas demand has been increasing so that the new development and supply of natural gas is not sufficient for the growth of demand in many parts of the world. As a result, the gas pressure in the pipeline cannot be maintained as high as before. This is particularly true during peak demand such as summertime or daytime. It means that the gas pressure in the pipeline would gradually decrease and even fluctuate.

A fuel gas compressor should properly handle such fluctuating gas pressure from the pipeline while simultaneously meeting the gas turbine’s required gas flow rate. Two changeable conditions are most relevant to fuel gas compressors: suction gas pressure fluctuation and the turbine’s load changes.

In addition, reduced oil carryover and low pulsation/vibration are also important, because they can lead to mechanical problems. Pulsation in particular is a big concern to gas turbines with dry low NO_X combustors, since the combustor is more sensitive to pulsation. In addition, natural gas can include impurities or dirt and its precise composition can even be subject to change.

There are three basic gas compressor designs exist: centrifugal, reciprocating and screw. Each design has mechanically different features. To date, centrifugal and reciprocating types have been used mainly for fuel gas boosting services in the United States and Europe. Screw-type fuel gas boosting compressors have been used mainly in Japan and Asian market

In 2016 Sundyne, a leader in the design and manufacture of highly-engineered centrifugal pumps and integrally geared compressors for use in the global oil and gas production, refining, petrochemical, and chemical industries, announced a new series of fit-for-purpose centrifugal gas compressors, which are ideal for applications associated with the power generation market.

As ever-increasing demand for clean energy leads to widespread use of gas turbine power generation in industrial and commercial power plants, many such facilities now require reliable centrifugal compression to boost fuel gas from the low pressure delivered in the pipeline to the higher pressures used by the turbine. Sundyne integrally geared compressors in the 20 to 7,500 kW range offer the optimal solution for aero-derivative, industrial and frame type gas turbines rated from 20 MW to more than 500 MW output.

Based on 50 years of compressor development experience, Sundyne fit-for-purpose skid-packaged fuel gas boost compressors handle this service with efficiency and reliability, ensuring a steady supply of fuel gas at the precise pressures needed for optimal turbine operation. Additionally, Sundyne compressors offer a smaller footprint than competing reciprocating and screw technologies, providing oil-free operation and a smooth, centrifugal flow that eliminates pulsations, offering a high-performance choice.

McIlvaine Company

Northfield, IL 60093-2743

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