Acceptance Criteria for Gas Compression Systems

Gas compression systems consist of a number of turbo machinery components: A Gas Turbine consisting of a gas producer turbine, and a power turbine; one or several gas compressors or gas compressor sections; and possibly a gearbox. The end-user usually defines very specific operating conditions. However, the acceptance testing is often performed on the individual components rather than the overall system. Intuitively, one would rather expect criteria that are based on the overall system operation. This paper suggests a different approach of defining the acceptance criteria, such that it is based on the performance of the overall system and thus ties the acceptance criteria to the operational goals of the installation. The review also includes comments on some mechanical aspects of factory and field-testing of turbomachinery. Because the above approach involves the entire system, the verification of the acceptance criteria needs to be addressed. It is therefore described how the overall system performance can be verified, even if the operating conditions during the test are different from the specified acceptance conditions. The advantage of this approach is that it avoids over-specifying equipment due to adding tolerances upon tolerances, while at the same time specifying what really counts for the operational success of the project.