6 August 2021
When a geothermal power plant breaks down, urgent repairs are required to avoid high costs. As the rotor chamber contains highly flammable pentane gas, adding nitrogen speeds up the repair process, limiting downtime of the plant. Atlas Copco Specialty Rental managed to get this geothermal power plant up and running again in 3 days.
If a geothermal power station breaks down, urgent repairs are required. In order to access the pentane turbine rotor you first have to remove the highly flammable pentane gas which is in a pressurized chamber. Every day the turbine is out of commission has a costly effect in lost generation! This is precisely the predicament in which Ngawha Generation Ltd, the owner of a number of geothermal power plant units found itself. Luckily, Atlas Copco Specialty Rental came up with a fast, efficient and fully compliant solution for assisting with safe access. It also delivered both the equipment and personnel required to launch the project on the very same day.
The Ngawha geothermal power plant
The solution came in the form of two state-of-the-art Atlas Copco NGM7+ nitrogen generating membranes. The modular design of the equipment also meant it could be easily connected to the customer’s own two 75kW compressors. The installation subsequently ran without fault for 3 days straight until a reading of 0 pentane was obtained and the sealed rotor chamber could be safely accessed.
Pentane vapour could, when mixed with the oxygen present in air, form a flammable mixture. So once the pentane rotor was stripped, repaired and finally reassembled, it was critical that the housing be depressurized to a negative pressure and then fully purged once more with high-purity nitrogen.
The NGM+ generates onsite nitrogen with high purity
The turbines of the geothermal power plant
The original call came in at 7.30 a.m. After devising and confirming a suitable solution, we succeeded in delivering the nitrogen units and all auxiliary equipment from Hamilton on the same day. We were also able to get 2 technicians from New Plymouth to drive to site and commission it straight away.
Our team’s rapid intervention not only saved our customer at least 1 day at the beginning of the project. The second purging operation was also completed in just 2 days instead of 3. Needless to say, the total savings in terms of lost power generation offset the cost of the rental many, many times over. A textbook example of what it means to make agility count!
4 August 2021
When a geothermal power plant breaks down, urgent repairs are required to avoid high costs. As the rotor chamber contains highly flammable pentane gas, adding nitrogen speeds up the repair process, limiting downtime of the plant. Atlas Copco Specialty Rental managed to get this geothermal power plant up and running again in 3 days.
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