The engineering staff of KGI has extensive experience providing engineering support to customers with older installed gas turbines. Heavy-duty gas turbines usually live much longer than original design intent. Customers’ needs frequently change over time due to regulatory constraints, fuel cost, power & efficiency needs, HGP parts cost, and need to keep an existing plant in operation far longer than originally intended. Thus, the KGI group has collected a large group of very experienced engineers to help customers with all their needs to study and implement any required changes. A brief listing of the more significant projects these engineers have accomplished include the following:
Gas Turbine Uprates (Increased Power)
Defined and directed uprates in output and efficiency for many gas turbines. Some examples include:
- 10% uprates for 10 MS7001E units in California.
- 60% uprates for 13 MS5001R units in Alaska.
- 16% uprates for 8 MS7001B units in Texas.
- 20% uprates for 30 MS5002B units in Indonesia.
- 8% uprates for 8 MS3002J units in Alaska
15 of the engineers on the KGI team have directed many of these gas turbine uprates.
Fuel conversions
Defined and directed over 100 fuel conversions including adding gas fuel to distillate fuel units, and adding heavy fuel(crude and residual) to distillate fuel units.
7 of the engineers on the KGI team have directed many of these gas turbine fuel conversions.
Emissions control
Added emissions controls to older units that had shipped without emissions controls, and/or had shipped with water injection, and subsequently converted to Dry Low Nox.
6 of the engineers on the KGI team have directed many of these gas turbine emission control additions.
Life Extension studies
Recommended upgrades to older units with over 300,000 fired hours, so they could continue to operate for an additional 200,000 hours.
3 of the engineers on the KGI team have directed many of these gas turbine life extension studies.
Hot Gas Path parts supersedure and interchangeability
Frequently the OEM’s change drawing numbers of the major gas path parts to incorporate new design features. This causes considerable confusion for existing customers, especially ones with large fleets, to know which Hot Gas Path parts can be interchanged between different units. a significant amount of support has been provided to customers with both interchangeability and supersedure issues.
6 of the engineers on the KGI team have directed many of these gas turbine HGP parts supersedure/interchangeability studies.
Unit replacements
Sometimes due to schedule constraints, and/or condition of an existing installed gas turbine, it is preferable to just change out the actual gas turbine, instead of maintaining it in place.
6 of the engineers on the KGI team have directed many of these gas turbine unit replacements.
Combined Cycle conversions
Due to increased need for efficiency on existing simple cycle gas turbine plants, many customers have added HRSG’s and a steam turbine/generator set, to convert to combined cycle.
3 of the engineers on the KGI team have participated in several of these conversions.
Plant optimization studies
Many customers with older existing gas turbine power plants have ask for optimization studies, to improve overall plant efficiency.
6 of the engineers on the KGI team have participated in several of these optimization studies.
Plant Assessment studies
Many customers do not have robust operating and maintenance procedures, and thus suffer from lower overall reliability and availability. To address these issues, customers frequently ask for a third party to do an audit/assessment of their plant, to help develop better operating and maintenance procedures.
6 of the engineers on the KGI team have participated in these assessments to support the customer’s needs.
Refurbished gas turbine power plants
Many customers have de-activated their gas turbine power plants, due to changes in their operating profiles. Many of these plants have been relocated to third world countries.
6 of the engineers on the KGI team have participated in refurbishing and relocating these older gas turbine power plants.
