Industrial Gas Turbines are subjected to a
very harsh operating condition mostly in the oil and gas
sector and in the desert environment, thereby causing
fouling in the engine component parts, especially the
compressor, and the total performance is hence distorted
as a result of this degraded engine component. Fouling of
the compressor blade is considered in this research. As
such, an optimization model for power augmentation
was improvised via compressor washing methods. These
state-of-the-art washing methods comprises of the online,
offline and combination of both methods. This was done
to ascertain the most crucial methods to be adopted for
further application and advice to gas turbine owners and
operators. Here, the operator has the option to select his
desired duration for the compressor to be washed
between certain intervals while also considering the
environment that engine is being operated. The
enhancement applied in the work is a computer based
linear programming model that is robust and have the
ability to investigate the highest and lowest values of the
net profit of the project to be determined. Pythia and
Turbomatch software of Cranfield University was used
for the engine performance simulation, and the outcome
appears very accurate since the deviations from existing
results do not have much disparity when compared. As
such, the engine was validated and hence utilized for the
entire research. An investigation of online, offline and a
combination of both online and offline compressor
washing was evaluated to determine the most
economically viable washing method to be implemented
to help operators combat the fouling issues and yield
profit.
Keywords : Compressor Washing, Efficiency, Fouling, Gas Turbine, Performance.