Executive Summary Report
Using Enalysis™ to Reduce Operating Costs
September 2, 2010
Calgary, Alberta
Current Plant Configuration
Detechtion Technologies was asked by a private oil and gas producer to review a compressor station configuration and to provide insight into reducing the overall operating cost for the station. The compressor station has two assets on site, a rotary compressor and a reciprocating compressor. The rotary compressor gathers field gas and boosts it into the reciprocating compressor. The reciprocating compressor compresses all of the boosted gas to the sales line pressure. Both of the units have electric drive motors, which is important for this document as electric drive motors are billed as an operating expense to an oil and gas producer in Canada.
Opportunity Overview and Proposal
After running the 1st set of Enalysis™ reports there was a clear indication that the reciprocating compressor was not running as efficiently as possible. The horsepower utilization was 76% and the cylinder capacity utilization was 71%; however the bypass was open 50%. This meant that the compressor was compressing 6.4MMSCFD of gas and only selling 3.8MMSCFD. It was then proposed by a Detechtion engineer to change the setup of the reciprocating compressor by closing the pockets and changing the low suction set-points (which would lead to closing the bypass valve). The highlights of the proposal are below:
Results
Once the change was made, the client ran another Enalysis™ report to ensure the units were operating well within their safe zone. After running this way for a period of a few months, it was clear that the simple changes to the pockets and set points made a huge impact to the cost of operating this facility. The real operating cost savings on electricity equaled approximately $20,000/month.
Through engaging Detechtion, the client realized a clear and effective way to reduce operating costs for their facility.