Professional Documents
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Diagnosing
a Compressor Train Rub at
Methanex, Chile
CASE HISTORY
ethanex (www.methanex.com) is the worlds largest producer and marketer of methanol with four
plants in Chile, along with other plants in Trinidad and Tobago, New Zealand, and a new plant under
construction in Egypt.
The Chilean plants produce methanol using natural gas transported from southern Chile and Argentina,
with a combined capacity of 3.8 million tonnes, approximately 10% of world methanol demand. The Chilean
plants are located along Cape Horn on the extreme southern tip of South America, allowing the methanol
produced to be easily exported by ship to several countries. To accomplish this task, Methanex maintains
the largest methanol tanker fleet in the world.
Monitoring Scope
Methanex relies extensively on GEs condition monitor-
Table 1 Screen captures from System 1 software showing machinery trains monitored at Methanex
Plant 4 in Chile.
Critical Machine Trains with 3500 Monitoring Systems
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CASE HISTORY
Figure 1 Machine Outline Diagram for main air compressor/booster air compressor.
Figure 2 Machine Train Diagram for main air compressor/booster air compressor.
CASE HISTORY
Figure 3 Orbit/timebase plot collected during unit coastdown as unit passed through 2100 rpm.
Red arrow shows location of constrained and attened orbit, indicative of a rub. Black arrow shows
direction of shaft rotation.
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CASE HISTORY
Figure 4 Shaft centerline plot at turbine inlet bearing during solo uncoupled run (top)
and coupled run (bottom) during coastdown. The bottom plot shows clear evidence of a
rub or preload forcing the shaft to the left. For reference, the diametral clearance of this
tilting-pad bearing is 330 (min) to 420 (max) m.
CASE HISTORY
Conclusions
Combined, these two indicators strongly suggested
a rub at the inlet end of the turbine rotor.
Additionally, following the trip event, the turning gear
system was not able to move the rotor, and abnormally
Root Cause
of another malfunction, the rotating equipment specialist again turned to his System 1 software and analyzed
Vo l . 27 N o. 2 2007 ORB I T 67