Conference Agenda

As technological advances emerge at breakneck speed, efficiency, and robustness of design drives innovation in the field of compressors, expanders, and pumps. At the core of such exploration rests the notion that experimental validation is needed to prove the concept and efficacy of novel designs. Unfortunately, due to limits in instrumentation and experimental setup, it is sometimes infeasible to grasp the physics behind complicated phenomenon solely through experimentation. Experimentation results can provide an incomplete picture which may in turn force an incomplete solution to be incorporated into the product design. Using an experimentally validated CFD model in conjunction with existing experimental results allows for an unexpurgated view of the broader system. One such instance of this problem is experimentally producing the pressure – volume (PV) diagram of a twin – screw compressor with an attached economizer. Due to instrumentation limitations caused by the geometry, the PV diagram is created by adjoining several pressure transducers placed along the female rotor. However, drawing a conclusion from this PV diagram is incomplete because comparing the result against the validated CFD model show that the pressure behavior exhibited in the experimentally created PV diagram is only local to the neighborhood of the pressure transducers, whereas the CFD model show that a continuous view of the compression process exhibits a smoother average pressure transition within the entire volumetric pocket. By combining experimental results along with the appropriate CFD model allows for a broadened understanding of the underlying physics that cannot be achieved solely through experimentation.

Screw compressors are key components in a range of refrigeration and air conditioning applications. It is essential that the design and operation of these systems is optimised to ensure energy efficiency and reliability. An important aspect of the compressor design is the choice of bearings used to support the twin helical rotors. These bearings must be capable of providing the reaction forces required to accurately locate the rotors across a defined range of inlet and discharge pressures for machines with a range of volume ratios and operating speeds. This paper explores the selection process for both rolling element and hydrodynamic bearings. The influence on compressor performance of these bearings can be defined in terms of the frictional power losses and required oil supply flow rates. Bearings can also have indirect influence on overall compressor efficiency, due to the potential introduction of leakage paths of process gas through low-pressure bearing oil drains. Therefore, additional sealing requirements for each bearing type are investigated, allowing an assessment of leakage flow and frictional power loss of bearing/seal systems and their influence on the overall performance of different compressor configurations in terms of energy efficiency, lifespan and maintenance requirements.

A purpose of a screw compressor experimental prototype development, rotor profiles design of optimization has many engineering problems. One of the main of them is trying to predict on this stage the compressor construction parameters, which are as close to the optimal as possible. Using of the compressor mathematical model for this aim sometimes is impossible, because of hardness of new mathematical model design and necessary of their accuracy checking. Therefor there is a necessary to have not only high-accuracy calculation tools, such as mathematical model, but also have some simplified engineering methods for the fast calculation of compressor parts’ conditions, which have enough accuracy for the first stage of the development at same time. These conditions also include the temperature field of the compressor rotors. The presented paper dedicated to the analyses of possibility to obtain approximation equations, which can be used for the calculation of the preliminary value of the screw compressor rotors’ temperature fields depending on the operation mode and construction parameters of the screw compressors