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Sean Tavares Co-authors Study of Screw Compressor Discharge Silencer

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Sean Tavares, assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering Technology program, co-authored a case study with Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and engineers from the Kuwait Oil Company.

They presented the case study, titled "Design and Performance Verification Testing of a Screw Compressor Discharge Silencer," at the October 2015 Gas Machinery Research Council conference in Austin, TX.

Case Study: Design and Performance Verification Testing of a Screw Compressor Discharge Silencer

Authors: Dr. Thomas Chirathadam, Benjamin White; and Eugene 'Buddy' Broerman, SwRI; Dr.T. Sean Tavares, Ph.D., University of New Hampshire at Manchester; Jawad Abbas Esmaeel, BSc, ME, and Sharad Kumar Meshram, BSc, ME, Kuwait Oil Company

Abstract
The paper presents the design and performance verification testing of a discharge silencer for a screw compressor unit installed in a crude oil/gas gathering station in Kuwait. The four-lobe oil free screw compressor, operating at 4,380 rpm (73 Hz) and with a design discharge pressure of 66.5 psig at a flow rate of 7.5 MMSCFD, initially had an absorptive type horizontal discharge silencer arrangement. However, in spite of the existing silencer, the discharge flow had high amplitude pulsations resulting in high amplitude vibration in the compressor casing and downstream piping. A new Helmholtz resonator type acoustic filter/silencer (reactive type) was designed in 2012 to reduce the downstream pulsation amplitudes to ~5% (pk-pk) of the static discharge pressure and to minimize the overall piping response. The new silencer is designed such that its acoustic responses avoid the screw compressor lobe passing frequency (4X running speed) and discharges a flow with significantly reduced pulsation amplitudes. Following the manufacturing and installation of the silencer unit, field testing was conducted in 2014 to confirm the agreement of the system performance to the design predictions. The silencer upstream and downstream dynamic pressures and discharge piping vibration amplitudes were recorded for various operating conditions and for two different silencer discharge orifice configurations. In addition, acoustic noise measurements were also performed around the compressor units, which revealed a noticeable reduction in sound levels compared to the operation with the previous silencer design. In summary, the new silencer design enables the operation of the screw compressor with significantly reduced discharge flow pulsation, and with piping vibrations that are within allowable limits.

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