GB2507713A

GB2507713A - Apparatus and methods for driving different applications by a power unit

Info

Publication number: GB2507713A
Application number: GB201214972A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Joseph Adir; Gabriel Grynwald
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2012-08-22
Filing date: 2012-08-22
Publication date: 2014-05-14
Also published as: GB201214972D0

Abstract

A gas turbine 2 is used to drive at least one of a range of potential applications 3 using parameters selected from a set of parameters held in memory 12. The parameters selected to be used by a controller 11 is done so by receiving a message indicating the application type from the application 3. The same gas turbine 2 may be used to power or drive a range of applications avoiding the need to furnish a turbine for each potential application. This arrangement provides greater flexibility and cost savings.

Description

Apparatus and Methods For Powering Applications By A Power Unit This invention relates to apparatus and methods for powering appheations by a power unit operable under variable operating parameters, preferably, but not exclusivdy, a power unit comprising a turbomachine.

Turbomachines are machines having compressors and turbines arranged about a rotational shaft and an example of a turbomachine is a gas turbine. The compressor is used to compress air and this is mixed in a combustion stage with a fuel and burnt. The resultant expanding products of combustion arc used to drive a turbine stage which is used to rotate the compressor stage and to provide useful output power which may be used directly by means of efflux thrust driving a power take off unit in the form of a power output turbine or via gearing arrangements and power take off shafts. Gas turbines are now used for a wide range of applications where a power source is required and will be most most familiar to the lay person by their use in powering aircraft. However, the same technology may be used in other applications such as the powering of vehicles or providing electrical power or in pumping applications.

In some technological fields of application of gas turbines, the eftiux is used to drive a power take off unit and the gas turbine, in essence, provides a source of forced air (usually including also the products of combustion). The power take off unit is provided as a distinct unit which is arranged to receive the forced air provided by the gas turbine.

Where the power take off unit is a power output turbine, within the unit there is a turbine which is made to rotate by the forced air to translate the energy of the forced air into a uscablc form. The output of the power output turbine may be applied to a gearbox or directly to an application to be driven. This power output turbine is not to be confused with the turbine typically within a gas turbine which is an integral part of the gas turbine used to drive the compressor stage. The power take off unit may take other forms other than a turbine, for example, it may comprise gearing to be driven by connection to main rotational shaft of the gas turbine. Thus the power take off unit is in its broadest sense a unit which is used to couple usefUl energy out of the power unit for its use by an application.

As will be appreciated, the operational requirements for the different applications will vary greatly. Gas turbines will operate at different levels of efficiency depending on the rotor dynamics. For some applications, the gas turbine will be required to operate at a more or less constant range of revolutions per minute, for example, in electrical power generation applications or a varying range of revolutions per minute, for example in fluid pumping applications. Accordingly, known uses for gas turbines require a bespoke power take off unit to be produced for a specific application to give the required operating parameters. Sometimes the gas turbine itself has to be tailored in order to drive a particular application. The complexity of producing a bespoke solution limits the manufacturing capacity and the number of gas turbines and also power take off units that it is possible to produce.

According to the invention there is provided apparatus for powering at least one application from a range of applications comprising a power unit operable in accordance with variable operating parameters to, in use, be operably coupled to the application to provide power thereto; a set of respective operating parameters for respective applications held in memory at at least one of the application or power unit; means responsive to coupling of the application to the power unit via a power take off unit to identify the application; means responsive the identification to select the respective parameters from the memory; and a controller responsive to the selected respective parameters to control the power unit.

By providing apparatus in accordance with the invention, a power unit may be designed to operate with a number of different applications. This will reduce the cost of producing the power unit due to the economies of scale that will occur in manufacturing large numbers of the same design of unit and will optimise the unit's life expectancy because of the incrcased availability of common components and spare parts. In addition, a user of the power unit will be able to use the same unit for a number of applications. For example, the same power unit may be used to provide electrical power by being coupled via a power take off unit to an electrical power generator or to provide fluid pumping capacity when coupled to a pumping application driving pumps or may be operably coupled to a plurality of applications, for example, to provide both the power to generate electrical power and pumping.

Currently, the use of gas turbines as power units has been somewhat limited by the available supply of such engines. This is because current manufacturing rational is based on the premise that the gas turbine needs to be made bespoke for a specific application. By use of the invention, one type of gas turbine may be used to power a range of potential applications overcoming the bias in the art that gas turbines need to be made bespoke for each application. Existing manufacturing capacity for such turbines may then be more efficiently utilised to enable more gas turbines to be produced. This will have a marked and significant improvement to the environment impact of power unit use, as gas turbines are typically much more efficient than alternative units for power generation such as diesel generators or pumps. In particular, gas turbines produce far less particulate pollution than diesel units. Accordingly, the invention confers the advantage of a reduced environmental footprint.

A yet further advantage is conferred by use of the invention. Current design methodology to provide bespoke solutions requires significant interaction between power unit manufacturers, power take off unit manufacturers and the designers of the applications.

This adds to the design and implementation costs and effectively limits the number of entities able to offer the required applications. Using the invention will simplify the design process for the application allowing more application manufacturers to enter the market place.

Another significant advantage of the invention is that by providing the parameters held in memory the parameters may be updated by conveniently downloading an updated set of parameters via internet connection, for example. This means that the parameters available for use may be the most efficient and safest parameters available. Here it should be appreciated that the power unit may be a device which is built for a very long service life. For example, some gas turbines are engineered to last over twenty five years. Thus, during the service life of the power unit, many different applications may be designed, implemented, revised and updated. Accordingly, utilisation of the invention will confer a greater overall product lifespan since the up-to-date parameters may be obtained and used to allow the power unit to be used with present and future applications. Existing applications may be also improved by revising the parameters to increase safety, energy efficiency or other matters.

In addition, operation of the power unit will not require the use of personnel highly skilled in the operation of the particular power unit employed. This will not only reduce operating costs but also enhance safety. Utilising the set of operating parameters that are provided, will ensure that the power unit is not operated in a manner which will result in damage to the power unit or render its operation unsafe in relation to the specific application that is being used at the time.

The memory for the set of operating parameters may be held at the application or at the power unit or at the power take off unit or at a combination of these. Detection of the coupling of the power unit to the application will result in the initiation of the transfer of or accessing of the operating parameters to be used to the controller. A number of interfacing protocols familiar to the person skilled in the art may be used in apparatus in accordance with the invention or bespoke protocols used.

To further enhance safety in relation to the specific parameters of an application, a second set of parameters may be held in memory that prevents the power unit being operated beyond certain operational limits. For example, a maximum rotational speed may be held in memory. This second set of parameters may be used to prevent certain safety critical thresholds being crossed. The controller may then perform a parameter set function check to ensure that the downloaded or selected parameters do not exceed the threshold set.

In the event that there is no agreement between the parameters, a fault may be indicated and remedial activity carried out which may include remote shutting down of the power unit and or application. The remedial activity may result in a service request or may result in a change to the operating parameters to cater for the lack of agreement. For example, the operating parameter for rotational speed may be changed to agree with the threshold by the controller. This may be done completely automatically or with the participation of a human operator. One of the parameters may be a validation check to validate the last time that the application to be powered was serviced as specified by the manufacturer.

Examples of the parameters to be used could be the output revolutions, a rate of increase or a rate of decrease of output power. For example, some applications may require a so-called "soft start" where the power is increased relatively slowly. For some applications such as electrical power generation, the parameters may include historical use data based on the variations of electrical demand. This will allow the power unit to be readied for more extreme variations in the required power. It will be appreciated therefore, that the operating parameters may include one to very many different parameters. All of these may be updated as required from time to time.

The invention provides the further advantage of ease of maintenance. If an application needs to be taken out of service for maintenance it may be more easily substituted by a replacement application. Likewise, the power unit may be more easily replaced as may the power take off unit. The invention also provides a method for driving applications by a power unit and in further aspects provides a power unit, a power take off unit and an application for use in the apparatus or method.

The power unit may take many forms. For example the power unit may be a turbomachine. In the described specific embodiment the power unit is a gas turbine which drives an application via a power take offunit in the form of a power output turbine.

The applications powered by the power unit may be used to provide power to additional applications. For cxamplc, an clcctrical powcr gcncration application may bc used to deliver electrical power to a power a pumping application. Both applications may be operably coupled to the controller.

In the described embodiment, thc power unit is coupled to a powcr takc off unit which, in this preferred form, is turbine connected to a gear box which the controller is able to control to vary the way in which thc powcr is delivered to the application. This is done by selecting different gear ranges to provide a variation in output torque and output revolutions per minute in accordance with the requirements of the application or applications to which it is operably coupled. In the second described embodiment the gear box is provided with a plurality of power output shafts which arc individually controllable.

Each shaft may then be used independent of the other to drive different applications. Thus, it will be appreciated by the person skilled in the art that the invention permits one or more applications to utilise the same power unit.

Specific embodiments of the invention will now be described, byway of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings of which: Figure 1 shows a power unit in the form of a gas turbine coupled to a power take off unit in the form of an output power turbine; a controller goveming the operation of the power unit; and an application powered by the power unit, Figure 2 shows a method for operating the apparatus shown in figure 1; and Figure 3 shows a further embodiment of the invention in which a power unit is used to power three applications.

As is shown in figure 1, apparatus I for providing a power unit and powcrcd application includes a gas 2 turbine and an application 3. The gas turbine 2 includes an inlet compressor 4 formed of a number of blades which takes in atmospheric air which is compressed before being passed to a combustor chamber 5 where it is mixed with fuel and ignited. The hot and expanding gasses resulting from the combustion are passed to efflux via a turbine section 6a. The turbine section 6 comprises a number of compressor blades 6a which are forced by the passage of the gasses to rotate. The turbine blades 6a rotate a shaft 7 about which they are fixed and the shaft 7 is coupled to the compressor 4 to provide the motive force to rotate the compressor blades.

Thegasturbine2iscoupledtoapowertakeoffunit8withtheforcedairgcncrated by the gas turbine 2 being channelled therethrough. The power take off unit 8 comprises a power output turbine 8a exposed to the gas flow which is has a shaft 8b connected to a gear box 8c. The forced air forces the power output turbine 8a to rotate the shaft 8b which in turn drives the gear box Xc. The gear box Xc is provided with gearing to enable the rotation of the shaft to be converted to a speed of rotation required to drive the application 3 to which it is connected by an output shaft 9. The combination of gears used is selectable to provide a desired output in terms of torque and revolutions per minute for the particular application or applications to bc powcrcd. Thc power take off unit 8 thus converts or translates the power generated by the gas turbine 2 into a form useable by the application 3.

In this embodiment the power take off unit is mechanically fixed to the power unit or gas turbine by means of thrcadcd mechanical fixings.

The application 3 is one example out of a suite of potential applications. In this case, application 3 it is an electrical power generation application comprising hardware to generate a multiphase electrical supply to a range of electrical machinery 10 in a factory.

The gas turbine 2 may be considered to be a power unit which as is indicated in broken outline and also includes a conlroller 11 and memory 12. The controller II includes a microprocessor operating in accordance with software embodied instructions held in R.OM (read only memory) not shown. It is connected by a control bus 13 to the gas turbine 2 by means of which it controls fluid control valves (not shown) to vary the way in which the turbomaehine operates. For example, more fuel may be admitted to the combustion chamber 5 via a fuel control valve to increase the output power.

Sensor outputs from various parts of the gas turbine are coupled to the controller 11 by means of a sensor bus 14. These sensors will provide information on the speed of rotation of the shaft, temperature of various components and other such data useful for performing the control of the gas turbine 2. The gear box 8 is also coupled to the control bus 13 and the sensor bus 14. This will provide data on the operation of the gear box such as temperature and enable control of the gear box 8. The data may therefore be used by the controller II for safety and other operational purposes.

Memory 12 includes a section where operating parameters are held in a memory structure which may be ordered. In this casc it is a table 15. The table comprises a set of operating parameters for different types of applications with which the gas turbine may be used. In this case there are four application types labelled A to D. The manner in which these parameters are selected and implemented will be described later.

The application 3 is provided with a user interface 16 which allows the application to be manually controlled. For example, it may be desirable to increase the power supplied to the machinery 10 and the user interface will provide the necessary input controls and output of information. For example, a keyboard or cursor or other input means may be provided together with output means such as a visual display unit. (It will be appreciated that the control may also be made automatic, that is to say not requiring routine human input.) The apparatus operates in the following manner. Firstly, the application 3 and the machinery 10 are assembled. Next the gas turbinc is mechanically connected to the application by coupling itto the gear box output shaft 9. Then a control and data bus connection 16 is made to the application and the gas turbine 2 and, in particular, to the controller 11. It will be appreciated by the person skilled in the art that the connection may be means of electrical, electronic or opto-coupling and using one or more of a range of known or specifically desied interfacing protocols.

The controller 11 detects that the connection is made and sends out an interrogation signal to the application 3. The application 3 responds with a message identifying the equipment with a unique identification code followed by information including equipment type. The controller 11 then inputs the type to the table of parameters 15 which responds with the corresponding operating parameter set. This is then used by the controller 11 to govern the operation of the gas turbine 2.

The process would be the same whatever the type of application coupled with the parameter set being obtained according to the type A, B, C or D (four types are used for illustration purposes and many more types or combination of types may be provided for).

It will be seen that the apparatus permits user input to vary the performance of the application 3. A request for more or less power will result in a power variation demand signal being routed from the application 3 to the controller 11 over the bus 17. This will result in the controller increasing the output power of the gas turbine 3 by following the set of operating parameters that havc already been identified.

In the event that the gas turbine 2 is to be operated with different equipment, the application 3 is mechanically decoupled and the bus 17 disconnected. The new application is then connected and the controller 11, upon detection of the connection, sends out an interrogation signal as before. The new application will respond with a unique identifier and also a type identifier. Again the controller accesses the memory and obtains thc appropriate operating parameters. If the application is not recognised then operation will be refused by the controller and an alert given.

In the described embodiment the parameters are held in a memory associated with the gas turbine. It will be appreciated that the memory may be provided as a separate plug-in module or provided in the application to be used. In any ease, the parameters may also be downloaded from the application 3 or another location for example over a communications link or via the internet. The parameters may in some cmbodiments be provided with a revision due date. When this date is reached the controller requests an update for the parameters. This may be done automatically. In order to prevent damage to the power unit by inappropriate parameters being downloaded and used a set of threshold parameters may be provided loaded into the memory which the downloaded parameters may not exceed. The controller 11 will then perform a parameter cheek before driving the power unit. This parameter check may be carried out before the first operation or as a matter of course during operation before new commands are issued to the power unit. Error outputs may be provided to indicate to a supervisor that there is a parameter mismatch for remedial action to be taken.

It will be also appreciated that the controller and or memory may be provided separate to the power unit or provided with the application. In other embodiments, the controller and or memory may be distributed between the power unit and application 3.

Figure 2 further illustrates the application of the method to control a power unit and application. In a first step, step 20, the application parameters are generated for the range of potential applications that may be used with the gas turbine 2. Those arc downloaded into the memory in step 21.

Monitoring is performed to determine when an application is coupled to the gas turbine, step 22. When connection is detected then an interrogation signal is sent form the controller to the application in step 23. The application responds with a message indicating type in step 24.

The controller then determines the type from the response in step 25 and selects, in step 26, the appropriate parameters to be used from the set of parameters for the various types held in memory. The parameters are then used in step 27 by the controller to control the gas turbine 2.

In the first described embodiment one application is driven or powered. It will also be possible to power more than one application. Where more than one application is to be driven, the parameter set held in memory may include a set for the specific combination of applications which is selected by the controller determining the applications being connected. For example, in the above described embodiment the parameter set D may be the parameters to be used when an electrical power generation application is connection and a ifirther fluid pumping application (not shown) is connected.

Figure 3 shows a further embodiment of the invention. In this embodiment, the power unit is used to power three applications 31, 32 and 33. The power unit is configured as before, with like components bearing the same reference numerals as the first embodiment. The gear box 8 is furnished with two output shafts 9 a and 9b. These are able to rotate independently of the other, that is to say, they may rotate at different revolutions per minute (rpm). Shaft 9b couples power to a first application 31. This is a water pumping application. Shaft 9a dclivcrs powcr to an clectrical powcr gcncration application 32. It will be seen that this application is coupled to a third application 33 and delivers electrical power thereto. The third application 33 is a further pumping application.

All the applications are coupled, as in the first embodiment, to the controller 11 via control and data bus connections. In this case the memory 12 includes a data set E to cater for thc attachcd combination of applications 31, 32 and 33.

A frirther variation may be implemented to drive more than one application from the samc powcr unit. Thc powcr take off unit may bc modificd to havc morc output powcr turbines. That is to say the turbine Sa may be duplicated to drive a second output gearbox which is coupled to the second application.

Examples of the turbomachines that may be used with the invention are the following gas turbincs: Rolls Royce RB2I I; GE LM2500; and Pratt & Whitney FTS.

The invention may be used in conjunction with a wide range of applications including gas compressors; electrical power generation by generators for example those availablc from BrushTM; well stimulation by providing power to injcction pumps such as those offered by WeirTM and FMCTM or to centrifugal pumps, for example the SulzerTM.

Claims

Claims 1. Apparatus for powering at least one application from a range of applications which apparatus comprising: a power unit operable in accordance with variable operating parameters to be operably coupled to the application via a power take off unit to provide power thereto; a set of rcspcctivc opcrating paramctcrs for rcspcctivc applications held in memory at at least one of the application, power take off unit and or power unit; means responsive to coupling of the application to the power unit to identify the application; means responsive the identification to select the respective parameters from the memory; and a controller rcsponsivc to thc sclectcd respective parameters to control the power unit.
2. Apparatus as claimed in claim 1 wherein the operating parameters are held in a memory table in the memory.
3. Apparatus as claimed in claim I or 2 comprising a further set of parameters determined by operating thresholds of the power unit.
4. Apparatus as claimed in claim 3 wherein the controller compares the selected respective parameters to identify a mismatch in the parameters.
5. Apparatus as claimed in any preceding claim wherein the application is at least one of electrical power generation, hydraulic power generation, fluid pumping, well stimulation, well extraction or gas compression.
6. Apparatus as claimed in any preceding claim wherein the power unit is a turbomachine.
7. Apparatus as claimed in claim 6 wherein the turbomaehine comprises a gas turbine.
8. Apparatus for powering at least one application from a range of applications substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to, and as illustrated by, the drawing.
9. An application adapted for use in apparatus as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 8.
10. A power unit or gas turbine adapted for use in apparatus as claimed in any one of claims I to 8.
11. A machine implemented method of powering at least one application using a power unit comprising the steps of: providing a set of power unit operating parameters for a set of potential applications types to be powered by the power unit; operably coupling the power unit to the at least one application; determining the connected application type; selecting from the set of power unit operating parameters the parameters appropriate to the determined type; and controlling the power unit in accordance with the selected parameters.
12. A method as claimed in claim II wherein the provided set ofturbomachine operating parameters are stored in memory.
13. A method as claimed in claim 11 or claim 12 wherein the step for determining the connected application type comprises the steps of: providing an application identification.
14. A method as claimed in claim 12 wherein the step of providing an application identification is carried out in response to an interrogation signal.
15. A method as claimed in any preceding claim wherein a further set of threshold parameters for operating the power unit is provided and a parameter verification is carried out to ensure that the selected parameters do not result in the power unit being operated beyond the threshold parameters.
16. A method substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to, and as illustrated by, the drawings.