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APR Energy wins 100MW gas turbine contract in Mexico

Opra to provide OP16 gas turbine powered genset to Germany

Centrax upgrades generator package at German district heating plant

Capstone to sell C1000 microturbine to Singapore CHP plant

In this episode of the TurboTime Podcast, Myth Busters Klaus Burn of Ebara Elliott Energy, and Rainer Kurz of RKSBenergy LLC, discuss root-cause analysis (RCA), including what it is, the philosophy and methodologies behind it, what actions should and should not be taken, and more.

Brun said: “RCA, some folks call it root-cause failure analysis, looks at something that failed: Your machine had a catastrophic failure, or you’re missing performance by a percent or two—something is not as you would expect in a compressor or gas or steam turbine, and you want to figure out what it is. So, you perform an RCA based on certain symptoms. In most cases, RCA starts with a review of the machine’s operation that may have preceded the failure and in some cases a metallurgical investigation, which is one of the best indicators as to what failed. It can indicate it was high-cycle fatigue, sudden overload, corrosion or erosion, for example. Then you figure out what excitation may have caused the high-cycle fatigue or what in your process gas may have caused corrosion or erosion.”

Kurz said: “In a way, this is a bit like a detective story. You find something failed, aka the dead body, and then you gather evidence. One of the key things in root-cause failure analysis is that you not only gather evidence, but you also document it. One of the key problems when these reports are written is you have a failure in 2015, for example, and you conduct an RCA, and the next similar failure isn’t for another 10 years. (These events don’t happen that often.) And if you haven't documented what you did for the first one, you can’t use it as a starting point.”

Podcasts

Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz discuss root-cause analysis—what it is, its methodologies, and why it’s so important to managing turbomachines.

TurboTime Podcast: Root Cause Analysis with the Myth Busters 

During this episode of the TurboTime Podcast, Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz discuss how hydrogen is transported and its use as an energy carrier. They then discuss how ammonia is produced, its advantages and limitations, and for what industries it’s a suitable solution.

“We’ve previously talked about hydrogen in some of our Myth Buster podcasts and how it’s relevant to a decarbonized energy economy as an energy carrier. Unfortunately, hydrogen itself has a lot of nasty characteristics: it's hard to compress, highly flammable, as a gas it’s not easy to deal with, etc. From a transportation and storage perspective, it leaks, has many safety issues, causes hydrogen embrittlement, etc., making it difficult to transport.”

“Making ammonia is nothing new. We know how to how the process works, but it is an energy-intensive process. But ammonia is a very toxic gas. It causes skin burns rapidly if you touch it in liquid form. In vapor form, even at less than 100 PPMs, it’s very irritating, so it creates a lot of issues from the handling perspective.”

In this episode of the TurboTime podcast, Myth Buster Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz discuss ammonia. 

TurboTime Podcast: Ammonia with the Myth Busters

This episode of the TurboTime podcast features an onsite interview from our Turbo Tour of EthosEnergy’s Light Gas Turbine and Performance Center Facility in Houston. Assistant Editor James Cook talks with Daniel Tegtmeier, Director of EthosEnergy's Performance Center, about remote monitoring and operations, the changing energy landscape, and the benefits of remote start/stop and virtual capabilities.

Q: How does remote monitoring keep simple-cycle assets viable in a market focused on renewable energy?

 If you think about a machine built 20+ years ago and its efficiency, it still has a place in the market when competing with renewables. It’s not like it used to be though—these units used to run wide-open, 24/7. They’re now intermittent assets competing with renewables and zero-cost fuels, but once the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, that load is gone.

These are simple-cycle configurations, so they can come online quickly and be at 100 - 120 MW in less than an hour. So, you’re going to staff a facility 8,000 hours per year in case they call you up? That’s part of what we do and the justification for remote operations—you need the intermittent load from simple-cycle assets in rapid fashion, but you can’t afford to staff these places full-time.

Q: In addition to that justification, are there any safety improvements delivered through remote start/stop and control capabilities?

 Economics seems to drive most decision processes behind whether you’re remotely operating a facility or not; however, there’s a huge safety aspect. You don’t need people there 24 hours a day around equipment with a lot of pent-up energy, so exposure levels drop dramatically. For the most part, these machines are designed so well and over-engineered from day one that they’re conducive to [remote monitoring].

In this episode of the TurboTime podcast, Daniel Tegtmeier, Director of EthosEnergy’s Performance Center, talks about remote operations and monitoring. 

TurboTime Podcast: Remote Monitoring with EthosEnergy

In part two of this episode of the TurboTime Podcast, Klaus Burn of Ebara Elliott Energy, and Rainer Kurz of RKSBenergy LLC, discuss surge and choke on a compressor map. They explain where they occur on the map, what happens to the compressor when they operate in these extremes, and about transient operation of a compressor.

Brun explained surge: “On the left side of the map you have surge, and on the right side is choke, overload, or stonewall. The most basic definition of surge is the compressor head cannot overcome the system-imposed pressure, i.e., pressure on the outside on the suction and discharge, and the compressor is not making enough head to overcome that pressure differential. So instead of the flow moving forward through the compressor, the flow suddenly turns around and goes backward through the machine until that pressure balances again, at which point the machine can overcome that head. Then it starts a process again. And that becomes a circular process—you get into these surge cycles, and it's a fairly complex thing.”

Kurz emphasizes that surge is an interaction between the compressor and the system around it, “meaning the compressor by itself doesn't surge,” he said. “If the system forces the compressor to make more pressure ratio than under whatever conditions the compressor is going to make, then the gas thus what it wanted to do in the first place, which is go from the high pressure to low pressure, meaning it goes backward through the compressor. The tricky part with that is on the compressor map, we show what the compressor does. So, the map by itself and that surge line on the map is essentially something you derive from the compressor performance.”

The Myth Busters, Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz, talk about surge and choke on a compressor map. 

TurboTime Podcast: Part II: Surge and Choke with the Myth Busters 

In this two-part episode of the TurboTime Podcast, Klaus Burn of Ebara Elliott Energy, and Rainer Kurz of RKSBenergy LLC, discuss compressor maps. The duo explains what compressor maps are, what they are useful for, how they fit into the process, and where head, flow, and efficiency islands fit in.

“In its most basic form, a compressor map is a graphical representation of how a centrifugal compressor behaves,” Brun said. “It's somewhat of an oversimplification because more factors play into it; but overall, it gives an accurate representation of what a compressor does within the system that it operates. A standard compressor map has an X and Y axis. The Y axis has something called head—isentropic or polytropic head. Sometimes you also see pressure ratio or a discharge pressure or a fixed section pressure. On the X axis is flow, and most of the time it’s volumetric flow. Sometimes you see mass flow, but that's not very common. Compressor maps also have a surge line on the left and on the right side of the map you have a choke or stonewall area. And finally, you have efficiency islands, and they correspond to the efficiency of the compressor. Not all compressor maps show them.”

Kurz further described efficiency islands: “Efficiency islands refer to the fact that these maps are three-dimensional, but we can only put them in two dimensions on paper. The three axes you want to display are head, flow, and efficiency. You use the efficiency lines in a very similar way to elevation lines. Also, the coordinates of the map that are directly affected by the compressor aerodynamics are head and flow. You can translate head into pressures or pressure ratios, and you can translate actual flow into mass flow, but ultimately what happens aerodynamically in the compressor is described by head and actual flow.”

The Myth Busters, Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz, talk about compressor maps—what they are, how they are generated, and what they are useful for. 



TurboTime Podcast: Part I: Compressor Maps with the Myth Busters 

In this episode of the TurboTime podcast, Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz talk about turbine degradation. They define terms such as fouling, corrosion, erosion, and rubbing and dig a little bit into what causes degradation, how it can be measured and minimized, and the difference between recoverable and non-recoverable degradation.

Burn explained: “A gas turbine system consists of a compressor, combustor, and one or several turbines, so degradation at its highest level is simply measured by what power output and efficiency to expect under certain operating conditions from a new machine and how much less power and less efficiency do you get after that machine has been running for thousands or tens of thousands of hours. The primary measurement is really on a macro level.”

During this episode, the Myth Busters break down the many terms associated with degradation, what components degrade, how it can be measured and minimized, and more. 

TurboTime Podcast: Turbomachine Degradation with the Myth Busters

In this episode of the TurboTime Podcast, we talk with Giuseppe Tilocca, Scientific Officer at ETN Global, a non-profit member association in the gas turbine technology space. ETN Global’s recent global report, 

Decentralized Energy Systems: Toward Carbon-Neutral Energy Solutions for Gas Turbines

, compares decentralized systems to centralized heat and power units and highlights its advantages—including modularity, the possibility to exploit waste heat avoiding energy transmission losses, and reducing energy distribution costs. Tilocca reviews these advantages in detail, as well as trends and emerging market opportunities, and he dives into gas turbines and how they fit into decentralized energy systems.

“Considering this specific report, we all know that the energy sector is transforming very quickly, and it's mainly driven by the increasingly high share of renewable energy sources,” Ticolla said. “In this scenario, which is dominated by variable sources whose daily, weekly, and seasonal flexibility are set to go dramatically, to meet the system requirements while accomplishing the ambitious decarbonization goals, we need to support traditional centralized generation with a mix of the centralized components.”

So, how does ETN Global define decentralized energy systems, and what are their advantages?

“Historically, we established centralized energy systems, meaning large plants located far from consumers,” Tilocca explained. “The reason behind it is merely economy of scale and efficiency, so it is cheaper to have one big plant than many small ones; however, with the increasing integration of variable renewable energy sources, which are inherently decentralized, we now need to adapt our infrastructure and incorporate technologies that are traditionally used for centralized energy. By definition, a decentralized energy system is located close to the consumption nodes—so on the end user side of the network—and therefore it's connected to the distribution grid rather than the transmission grid. The advantages of a decentralized energy system are mainly modularity, the possibility of exploiting waste heat, and a positive contribution to stability. In particular, one of the main advantages of being close to consumption nodes is avoiding transmission and distribution losses and also costs compared to centralized generation. Centralized energy systems are pivotal in meeting the pillars of the energy trilemma, which stress the principles of affordability, security, and climate neutrality and hence it aligns with the requirements for the transition toward 2030 but also 2040 and 2050.”

ETN Global’s Scientific Officer, Giuseppe Tilocca, talks about the association’s recent report on decentralized energy systems—their advantages and challenges, trends, and where and how gas turbines fit in.  

TurboTime Podcast: Decentralized Energy Systems with ETN Global 

In this episode of the TurboTime Podcast, the Myth Busters discusses the role of turbomachinery in energy transport and storage, including how gas turbines maximize energy density. They dive into various forms of energy storage—including batteries, hydrogen, and mechanical and thermal energy—for various energy sources such as wind, solar, fossil fuels, etc., and more.

During the energy transport and conversion processes, for example in the case of hydrogen, there are significant energy losses. The lowest losses are with coal, then oil and fossil fuels. As a result of these losses, “Hydrogen is a viable solution for storage, but it’s not a great solution to power a large-scale electric power plant by itself,” Kurz said.

Really, energy comes down to sustainability, affordability, and sustainability of supply – and in this equation, renewables are typically intermittent and not a reliable full-time source of energy.

So where does turbomachinery fit into all of this?

“From a turbomachinery perspective, if you exclude electric—because as Rainer said, it's not always applicable, as you can’t transport energy from Venezuela to Florida along an electric line—then you have to convert your energy stored material, be it natural gas, oil, coal, or from an alternative source then you have to convert it into hydrogen or ammonia or something else, and then transport it,” Brun explained. “All these convergent processes utilize turbomachinery. We have maybe 100 years of experience transporting oil in pipelines and ships and trucks and that involves a lot of pumping—we're very good at pumping – it’s very efficient. We also have about a similar amount of time compressing natural gas, which over the last 40 - 50 years we've used a lot more centrifugal compressors for transporting natural gas. Now we're running into the challenge of sustainable alternative energies where basically you're saying, ‘OK, I'm going to take my wind and solar electric and convert them to let's say hydrogen or ammonia or dimethyl ether or methanol—there are a lot of fluids that you can make from electricity that are energy carriers—but then they have to be transported. Hydrogen is the lightest gas (We had a previous podcast where we talked about the challenges of 

). Similarly, ammonia is a liquid that has to be transported at slightly refrigerated temperatures, and it brings its own challenges because it's highly poisonous and very corrosive to a lot of materials. Dimethyl ether is not that hard to transport—it’s similar to diesel—but it's very expensive to make. Methanol is also highly poisonous. So there are a lot of other challenges that you now face with these energy carriers that you worry about when transporting your original form of energy to the end user.”

Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz dial into energy storage and transport—why they are necessary, how turbomachinery fits into these processes, and more. 

TurboTime Podcast: Energy Transport and Storage with the Myth Busters 

This episode of the TurboTime podcast dives into carbon capture and storage (CCS) with Spencer Schecht, the Senior Business Development Lead at the Global CCS Institute. We discuss how these facilities are at an all-time high, the role of carbon capture networks and hubs, and some of the challenges and hurdles it’s facing.

, said that CCS has ramped up to an all-time high— a 102% increase in scheduled deployments since 2022—due to supportive and enabling policy, as CCS is becoming a more prominent feature of public policy.

“At a high level, we need CCS and CO2 removal to meet our climate targets to achieve climate neutrality,” Schecht said. “So, while we require an all-of-the-above portfolio of climate technologies and solutions, it is the versatility of CCS—the fact that it enables both emissions mitigation and removal—that makes it such a unique and important resource in our climate toolkit. For example, CCS can be applied across emissions-intensive industries, including hard-to-abate sectors such as steel, cement, chemical production, and power production, to achieve decarbonization that is not otherwise technically nor economically possible. This enables the reduction of low-carbon hydrogen, and it can also be retrofitted on fossil-fuel power plants or incorporated in the design of new power plants providing baseload low-carbon dispatchable electricity. And when combined with bioenergy or direct air capture, with permanent geologic storage, CCS is an enabler of delivering negative emissions, and we need negative emissions to scale massively in the years ahead. This lays out a very clear picture that CCS and CO2 removal must scale up to gigatons, which is billions of tons per year, to achieve our climate targets.”

Check out the Global CCS Institute’s insights in 

Turbomachinery International’s May/June cover story

Carbon capture and storage’s versatility enables both emissions mitigation and removal, making it a unique and important resource as a climate solution.

TurboTime Podcast: Carbon Capture and Storage with the Global CCS Institute 

Myth Busters Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz join the TurboTime podcast to chat about additive manufacturing. They dive into its history in the industry, its advantages as a viable technology, its limitations, and new advancements that could drive the technology further.

Brun explained: “About 40 years ago, additive manufacturing technology started coming out based on using materials such as polymers and resins that were heated up and layered on top of each other using some kind of robotic arm or plotter that in the 3D space. It wasn’t all that relative from a turbomachinery perspective at the time because yes, you could use that to make a mold for a cast, but other than that, it wasn’t realistic. About 20 years ago, we started seeing additive manufacturing using metals. There are a number of techniques, but the most popular ones are direct metal sintering or selective metal-laser sintering—these techniques are when you have a layer of metal and a heat source, and you put the heat source on the powder-metal layer to create a 3D geometry in 3D space. That technique has developed over the last 20 years—it came out with lots and lots of promises, some of which held up while other promises didn't hold up."

“From a turbomachinery perspective, there are many parts in a compressor, for example, or a gas or steam turbine, that are relatively standard pieces; you would probably not use additive manufacturing for those pieces because they're always the same, so you would cast them or quickly machine them. But then there are certain pieces that are either very intricate in geometry, so they require many smaller pieces to be put together or that are customized like impellers for centrifugal compressors. So here, theoretically, additive manufacturing should have an advantage because additive manufacturing provides you with the potential to build customer parts.” 

What’s the history of additive manufacturing, how is it used to manufacture turbomachines, and does it really have a future in the turbo industry? Find out more from the Myth Busters in this episode of the TurboTime Podcast. 

TurboTime Podcast: Additive Manufacturing with the Myth Busters 

The East Texas facility will serve as a buffer to balance natural gas supply and demand, ensuring continuous service during times of peak electricity demand.

Trinity Gas Storage’s Facility Goes Online, Supports ERCOT Grid

Svante will capture, compress, condition, and liquefy CO2 emissions, and Tenaska will manage CO2 transportation and sequestration.

Svante Technologies, Tenaska to Develop Industrial CCS Solutions

Xu Xin, President of GE Vernova Gas Power - China Services, said natural gas will help China replace coal with a scalable power supply.

The Coal-to-Gas Transition: GE Vernova Decarbonizing China with H-Class Technology

With new financing, Amogy will continue developing and commercializing its ammonia-to-power systems in the maritime shipping and stationary power generation markets.

Aramco, SV Investment Leads $56M Funding Round for Amogy’s Ammonia Tech

The facility will produce up to 800,000 MTPA of clean ammonia and connect to nearby natural gas and CO2 sequestration infrastructure.

Avina Clean Hydrogen Concludes FEED, FEL-3 for Gulf Coast Clean Ammonia Facility

Turbo Tour of EthosEnergy’s facility in Houston, Performance Center Director Daniel Tegtmeier offered his insights into the growth and evolution of remote monitoring, its advantages and challenges, and how the company seeks to establish partnerships in all things turbine- and plant-related.

Daniel Tegtmeier of EthosEnergy shares how remote monitoring has grown over the past several years and the advantages and challenges of virtual capabilities. 

Remote Monitoring: Growth, Advantages, and Challenges

Q: How has remote monitoring grown and evolved over the past several years? What’s next?

What started as very manual processes has now evolved to mostly automatic and automatically generated monitoring activities. What used to take operators and engineers days to troubleshoot problems is now an automated process via advancements in technology.

Q: EthosEnergy now has full start/stop capability on natural gas-fired power plants. What advantage does this offer your customers?

It’s more than just start and stop in thermal plants; we can start and stop renewable assets as well. Some of the advantages of remote operation are efficiencies. You could streamline the staffing model for intermittent thermal assets. Secondly, our package includes remote monitoring and advanced analytics that’s applied to the remote operation of customer assets, ensuring that they stay competitive in today’s market.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge facing the power industry as it relates to remote operations?

The biggest challenge is the reluctance to shift operating modes from mostly on-site human presence—operating the plant as designed—to remote facilities that apply humans to asset monitoring.

Q: What are EthosEnergy’s five- to 10-year goals?

The five-year goal is growth. EthosEnergy aspires to be a partner in all things turbine- and plant-related, and it’s not just the power industry. Turbines are used in a host of operations like LNG and oil and gas—we seek to be the largest partner for all those industries in the realm of rotating equipment. We want to increase partnerships and our OEM presence.

Remote Monitoring: Growth, Advantages, and Challenges 

’s visit to EthosEnergy’s Houston-based light gas turbine workshop, Philip Booth, the Engineering Manager, shared his favorite part of day-to-day operations and offered insight into the available tools used in reverse engineering.

EthosEnergy’s Engineering Manager Philip Booth discusses available technology in reverse engineering for rotating equipment.

Reverse Engineering Adapts with Advanced Technologies

Q: What progress has been made over the last 10 - 20 years in available technology relating to engineering/reverse-engineering capability for rotating equipment?

The technology from OEMs has become increasingly complex, so reverse engineering must follow that complexity. Some of the available tools used to be computerized maintenance management systems (CMMs) where you get low-density data; we’re now using the most advanced blue-light scanning technology to capture the fit, form, and derive the function of parts.

We have a lot of technology available that is way beyond replicating a part. But we need to engineer solutions into that part so that we can make advancements to avoid early-life failure and bring that to bear so that our products are equal to anything from OEMs in the marketplace.

Q: What is your favorite part of day-to-day operations at your facility?

 It’s the range of subjects we cover. From an engineering point-of-view, the team can be looking at performance data in the morning; they can be working on a repair development program at lunch; we’re supporting the workshop in the afternoon; and we might be supporting a field-service technician across the world in the evening. I love being part of those conversations and being part of the problem-solving process.

Check out our video interview with EthosEnergy on 

Aftermarket, Repairs, and Overhaul Market.

Reverse Engineering Adapts with Advanced Technologies 

Turbomachinery International visited one of EthosEnergy’s Houston-based facilities: the light gas turbine workshop and performance center. During our tour, we spoke with Philip Booth, the Engineering Manager at EthosEnergy’s light turbine facility. He shares the changes he’s seen in the past several years in the repair and overhaul market and the impacts decarbonization has had on aftermarket repairs.

On our Turbo Tour of EthosEnergy, Engineering Manager Philip Booth spoke about the repair, overhaul, and aftermarket markets.

Aftermarket, Repairs, and Overhaul Market with EthosEnergy

Q: What changes have you seen over the past 5 – 10 years in aftermarket repair/overhaul? What trends are you seeing?

From an engineering point of view, we are increasingly seeing customers looking to aftermarket for our technical and engineering expertise. We answer questions about the turbines, yes, but increasingly [it’s about] balancing their plant—trying to support the customers, optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of their plant, extend the time between overhauls to bring down lifecycle costs.

Q: How has decarbonization impacted, if at all, aftermarket repairs?

 We've seen this two ways: The obvious one is as emission limits have dropped, OEMs have responded accordingly, developing new technologies. In the aftermarket, we've had to respond to that, so we're quite comfortable overhauling and testing all the technologies—conventionally fired units or wet NOx abatement engines—but increasingly we can test and overhaul right up to the sub 10 PPM NOx engines. So, we're comfortable supporting the most advanced technologies in the workshop.

Second, it's more about the life of the equipment—people are much more inclined to try to extend that as long as possible, so we have a repair-centric methodology for the overhaul process. We work with our other businesses in the Ethos network to develop advanced repair technologies, such as a part that would’ve been thrown away years ago, we're repairing and making sure it still has its effectiveness so that it's good for another four to five years of operation.

On our Turbo Tour of EthosEnergy, Engineering Manager Philip Booth spoke about the repair, overhaul, and aftermarket markets. 

 spoke with Dag Calafell, the Advisory Committee Chair of Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia (TPS) and Asia TPS, about the new research consortium and laboratory at Texas A&M. He also talked about the differences between TPS and Asia TPS.

TURBO: Are you excited about any upcoming or underway projects at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station?

You may have heard from Dr. Eric Peterson, the Director of the Turbomachinery Laboratory at Texas A&M, that a whole new laboratory space is being created that will deal more with systems instead of traditional machinery components. The turbomachinery laboratory research has been traditionally on component work, but now we will be looking at systems overall. That facility is scheduled to open at the end of this year. There will be a new research consortium with topics such as carbon capture and greenhouse gas emissions.

TURBO: Do you have plans for the next Asia Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia?

The Asia event is every two years, and we have found there is a difference in focus between TPS and Asia TPS. TPS is a little more practical, more 

—what do we have, what do we do with it, and how do we optimize our facilities? Whereas Asia TPS a broader event where we talk about research, upcoming products, product development, etc. We are seeing Asia TPS develop in that direction, going from case studies on optimizing machinery to what solutions should we be developing for the future and for some of the problems that we have today.

Dag Calafell of TPS talks about the new wing of the Turbomachinery Lab at Texas A&M and its shift in focus to systems versus components and plans for Asia TPS. 

Research Consortium at Texas A&M, Asia TPS

Dag Calafell of TPS talks plans for Asia TPS and the new wing of the Turbomachinery Lab at Texas A&M and its shift in focus from components to systems.

Conference Coverage

Research Consortium at Texas A&M, Updates on Asia TPS

At Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia 2024, Dr. Eric Petersen, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Turbomachinery Laboratory at Texas A&M, shared what he’s most excited about regarding gas turbine combustion advancements.

Dr. Petersen explained: “In particular to advancements related to what we're doing at Texas A&M University’s Turbomachinery Laboratory is propulsion and combustion—these are two areas of major research that we've been involved with for several years. The Turbomachinery Laboratory is building a new facility on campus called 

The Propulsion and Energetics Research Laboratory

. It will allow us to expand and perform experiments at much higher pressures, much higher flow rates—the kinds of experiments you see for combustion for gas turbines and all types of propulsion systems. We will be able to conduct chemically reacting, high-pressure, high-temperature flow experiments safely in this new building.”

At TPS 2024, Dr. Eric Petersen of Texas A&M, shared what he’s most excited about regarding gas turbine combustion advancements.

Propulsion, Combustion at Texas A&M Turbo Lab

At TPS 2024, Dr. Eric Petersen shared what's new at the Turbomachinery Laboratory at Texas A&M, including combustion and propulsion. 

Propulsion, Combustion Advancements at Texas A&M Turbo Lab

spoke with Dag Calafell, Advisory Committee Chair of Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia (TPS) and Asia TPS, about the latest trends in turbomachinery and efforts that he sees across the industry to decarbonize.

TURBO: What trends you’re seeing in turbomachinery?

What we're seeing now is that the traditional turbomachinery topics are still important, but we're looking more at how to integrate the turbomachinery optimization/reliability topics using AI, using machine learning, and how can we be part of a larger system where we're optimizing revenues, profitability, and supply chain logistics.

TURBO: What efforts are you seeing for decarbonization?

 A couple of presentations earlier today addressed decarbonization. One was on integrating gas turbines into bottoming cycles, and another one was a tutorial on using all the various technologies for carbon capture. It talked about how today we're using amines but what are we going to be doing in the future, such as exhaust gas recirculation? So, a lot of our program is indeed how do we minimize our emissions. One of our end users is working on using AI and machine learning algorithms to optimize their turbomachinery trains to run them at peak efficiency and therefore reduce emissions across the entire company.

At TPS 2024, Dag Calafell of TPS, shared turbomachinery trends and industry efforts toward decarbonization. 

Turbo, Decarbonization Trends at TPS 

Turbomachinery, Decarbonization Trends from TPS Chairman

Turbomachinery International spoke to Klaus Brun, Ph.D., the Director of Research and Development at Ebara Elliott, at Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia (TPS) 2024 in Houston. He shared insight into Elliott Group’s rebranding under Ebara Corp. and how the new entity will tackle industry challenges with an upcoming portfolio of sustainability-focused products.

“Elliott, like any other company in our industry, must follow what our customers do and what our market does. We’ve seen a significant transition in the energy industry over the last 10-15 years. We’ve seen more sustainability and more green energy, and so our products need to change with that market. That doesn’t mean we’re neglecting our current customers or the industry we’ve been serving for over 100 years, but we do have to address the changes we see in the energy industry. Our new name is Ebara Elliott Energy Co., with a specific focus on the energy market and not just on products.”

TURBO: What are the biggest challenges facing the industry?

“Everybody’s talking about decarbonization of the industry, so we’re looking at hydrogen and CO

. These are very new products that need to be developed—they currently don’t exist or are not as optimal as they should be. To meet these drastic market changes, we must develop new products and it’s not just the products, but the entire organization. As our customers change toward decarbonization and sustainability, we must change with them.”

Dr. Klaus Brun of Ebara Elliott addresses the company’s rebranding, prominent industry challenges, and upcoming products for sustainability and green energy at TPS 2024. 

Ebara Elliott Discusses Rebrand, Upcoming Projects for Industry Challenges

At TPS 2024, Klaus Brun of Ebara Elliott addresses the company’s rebranding, prominent industry challenges, and upcoming products for sustainability and green energy. 

Ebara Elliott Discusses Rebrand, Upcoming Products for Industry Challenges

Dr. Eric Petersen, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Turbomachinery Laboratory Director at Texas A&M, talks about the hottest sessions and topics at the 2024 Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia.

“The hottest technical sessions are the ones that have to do with emerging technologies, for example, those related to supercritical CO

 in terms of sequestration—basically preventing CO

 from going into the atmosphere," Dr. Petersen said. "That’s a big national and international concern, so a lot of engineering companies are working toward compressing, transporting, and handling large quantities of CO

“Other hot topics are our more classic topics. There's a new generation of engineers that want to get up to speed as quickly as possible on the basics of turbomachinery. We do this through our tutorials, short courses, and discussion groups, so there's a lot to learn from the generation of experienced engineers who form our advisory committee. A lot of our presenters are key engineers in the industry who have been working in turbomachinery for over 20 years.”

Dr. Eric Petersen from Texas A&M shares what's hot at this year's show. 

What's Hot at TPS 2024 

Dr. Eric Petersen of Texas A&M shares what the hot sessions and topics are at TPS 2024. 

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