<p>Suspended micrometric particles are always present in the air swallowed by gas turbines. These solid particles can overpass the filters of heavy-duty gas turbines and deposit onto the internal surfaces of the compressor, leading to the overtime reduction of the machine performances, and, as a result, to the fuel consumption augmentation. A widely employed method to slow down the engine degradation is to wash the engine frequently. Over the years, the washing techniques have been continuously improved in order to reach the best compromise between low fluid consumption and high washing capabilities. In this work, an experimental campaign has been carried out to estimate the washing effectiveness on a multistage axial-flow compressor fouled with micrometric soot particles. The cleaning fluids tested in the present work were demineralized water and two cleaners provided by ZOK International Group ltd: a commercial cleaner available on the market (ZOK 27), and a new, under development, &nbsp;environmentally-sensitive formula. The fluids have been tested employing three droplet size distributions (with mean diameters of 20 µm, 50 µm, and 100 µm). The washing effectiveness has been assessed through image post-processing techniques by analyzing the pictures of the stator vanes and rotor blades taken in fouled and washed conditions. The off-design condition (sub-idle) in which the compressor has been operated showed that the finest droplet diameters led to the best results in terms of surface recovery, probably due to the presence of extended separated zones on the blades and vanes, which promote the motion of smallest droplets towards the airfoils. The formula in its’ development stages showed a promising washing capability, comparable, under certain conditions, to that obtained with the commercially available cleaner, ZOK 27.</p>

Washing Effectiveness Assessment of Different Cleaners on a Small-Scale Multistage Compressor

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/GT/GT2021/volume/84898

Turbo Expo 2021

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.