Upgrading your Existing Agglomeration or Electrostatic System

Have you purchased an agglomeration or electrostatic unit to “solve” your gas turbine varnish problems?  Have you had a lack of consistent, long term results?  Or even worse, continued unit trips and varnish problems in spite of purchasing this equipment?  You are not alone.  A recent survey by a major oil company concluded that 50% of the plants in the country that have purchased this technology are dissatisfied with the results.  

Electrostatic separators (including BCA technology) are designed to remove insoluble, suspended contaminants in turbine oils.  These contaminants include sub-micron degradation products that lead to varnish.  Unfortunately, the majority of contaminants in an operating gas turbine are in dissolved or soluble state leaving them unaffected by electrostatic separators.  The degradation products precipitate out of the fluid in a cool, static environment.  It typically takes twelve to seventy-two hours for this precipitation to take place.  This can occur when you take an oil sample and submit it for analysis, or in your IGV line when you’re offline.  Bottom line: electrostatic separation technologies do a good job of addressing 20% or less of the varnish problem, leaving you susceptible to a unit trip with this technology installed.

Are you ready for a Guaranteed Solution?

EPT recognizes the limitations of electrostatics (even though we have our own electrostatic technology) and has created a safe, effective way to remove the soluble contaminants while your unit is online, called Ion Charge Bonding (ICB).  This is designed to work with or without your existing electrostatic separation technology.  We provide a Certificate of Performance Guarantee that removes all risk from the process and guarantees that the varnish potential of your fluid will be lowered to normal levels.  Take a look at some of these impressive case studies that show the impact of ICB in large frame gas turbines.


What do you do with your existing electrostatic separation technology?

Most likely, your current equipment is still functional and is effective at removing sub-micron contaminants.  Although the technology will not solve your varnish problems, there are a few ways to increase the value of this investment:

1. You can leave it installed on your GT units as to remove sub-micron hard contaminants and maintain lower particle counts.
2. You can move this technology to an EHC system where the sub-micron contaminants are insoluble and easily removed by electrostatic separators. Or,
   
3. You can install this technology on a steam turbine reservoir, which will extend the life and performance of the turbine oil in this system.

A summary of our research on electrostatic separation technologies:

• The EPT ECR8000 is the most advanced electrostatic system in the world.  In head-to-head trials, we have outperformed our competitor's electrostatic separation technologies.  However, our electrostatic unit will not solve gas turbine varnish problems since the contaminants that need to be removed are dissolved (soluble) at operating temperatures.  This technology works well during an outage (example: hot gas path inspection) when the reservoir has a chance to cool for weeks.  The technology is also effective at removing sub-micron contaminants in EHC systems.
  

• ISOPur utilizes a “Balanced Charge Agglomeration” technology which is effective at removing sub-micron contaminants.  Often, when these units are not functional, the customer is told to purchase more filters.  This seldom has an impact on the performance of the technology, since the contaminants that need to be removed are dissolved (soluble) at operating temperature anyway.  This technology works well during an outage (example: hot gas path inspection) when the reservoir has a chance to cool for a couple of weeks.  The technology is also effective at removing sub-micron contaminants in EHC systems.
  
  
• Kleentek has a traditional electrostatic system.  This technology works well during an outage (example: hot gas path inspection) when the reservoir has a chance to cool for a couple of weeks.  While it has been effective at removing sub-micron contaminants in EHC systems,  CleanOil has developed a new replacement element for Kleentek systems which provides several times the performance.  A customer presented independent head-to-head test results of the Kleentek element versus the CleanOil element in the same Kleentek unit at the May 2008 7FA Users Conference.  His summary of data concluded that the CleanOil element provided 10X the cleaning speed versus the Kleentek element.
  
  
• Oilkleen manufactures a traditional electrostatic system, but employs a foam-based collector known to melt and decompose in certain turbine/hydraulic lubricants and lubricant environments.  This electrostatic system cannot deliver the results observed using ICB because it is designed to only capture insoluble contamination, period.  It will work well at removing insoluble conamination during an outage or on temperate reservoirs. 
  
  
• CC Jensen removes sub-micron contaminants through adsorption in high density, depth media filters.  This technology works well during an outage (example: hot gas path inspection) when the reservoir has a chance to cool for a couple of weeks. 

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   today to find out how you can extract the most value from your varnish mitigation, electrostatic technology investment while moving to a guaranteed solution so that you no longer have to worry about this "sticky" issue.