Skyline Technologies - Air Filtration and Gas Turbine Compressor Cleaning

Gas turbine compressor optimisation is achieved through a balanced package of air filtration and compressor cleaning.

Does your engine run all year round? Do you stop every weekend/night? Do you stop for maintenance every three to six months? Is your engine located in a humid, dusty or greasy (or a combination of the above) environment? Each of the above requires a different approach to filtration and the cleaning of your gas turbine.

Filtration services for gas turbines

We cater to the gas turbine operating world. We advise and optimise filtration solutions. In addition to this, we repair or replace filter houses with state-of-the-art infrared inlet heating, fluid dynamics show case of our design for your new filter housing in order to get minimum air turbulence and get maximum efficiency / air flow out of your filter housing.

In addition to this we take care of your sound attenuation issues and supply silencers to meet demanding requirements.

Efficient air inlet filtration

The current trend is to get filtration to higher and higher levels. Some companies today are running with H12 (Hepa filters). Of course this keeps the compressor clean. However, all this high efficiency comes at a cost. High air volumes through increasingly fine filters increase delta P. A possible solution is filters with a larger surface area per filter.

For example, imagine taking a drink from your fresh orange juice. The first sip without straws is easy. Now, put in 100 straws with a very small diameter and try to 'suck' up another swallow of orange juice – not so easy. Many straws are blocked by the 'contamination' in the juice, leaving a smaller number through which you can 'suck' the same volume of juice. The same applies to air inlet filtration. If you increase filter efficiency, with the same number and size of filters, you incease resistance, i.e. delta P.

In addition, filtration originally installed by the OEM generally is not the best due to the fact that they have to hand over the engine with maximum performance. Therefore, they will generally install a filter package that gives filtration, is acceptable, with minimum delta P. Low delta P means high engine output; generally it also means large pores in filters, i.e. a lower filterclass filter. The performance test is done for a week, even a month. The site is handed over. The customer runs the engine and finds out a year later that engine performance is low and that their compressor is very dirty.

Filtration and gas turbine compressor on-line cleaning

We believe the optimum package for every engine is not the highest filtration, but is a combination of filtration and gas turbine compressor on-line cleaning. This works with many existing filter houses, and does not require upgrades or new filter houses.

The idea of on-line cleaning is to keep your compressor clean, not to clean it once it is dirty. All that will happen if one tries to clean the compressor after it has become dirty is that the contamination is moved further back into the compressor, causing a loss of efficiency instead of an increase.

This means that your compressor should be washed on a daily basis. Depending on the pollution in your environment, you can on-line wash with demineralised water only. However, we find that many types of contamination are not completely removed with demin water; therefore, a wash once a week with ZOK27 or ZOKmx is advised.

Based on the results, i.e. engine degradation, one can continue a daily wash with demin water and perform an on-line wash with ZOK27 or ZOKmx once a week. If the engine efficiency increases, it shows there is more room to achieve a better efficiency. Then one can start to wash twice a week with ZOK27 or ZOKmx, keeping the daily wash with demin water in place.

On the other side, the on-line wash with ZOK27 or ZOKmx weekly may prove too much. Then one can keep washing daily with demin water and try, for a period, to wash once every two weeks or once a month with ZOK27 or ZOKmx.

On-line cleaning achieves the best results with gas turbines running base load. One has to start on-line washing with a clean engine.

The set-up of your filtration/washing regime very much depends on the location and the environment you are in, and the type of filter housing you have to clean your combustion air.