Fault shutdown analysis & improvement proposals of gas turbine-driven compressor units in the main lines of West-East Gas Pipeline

With the continuous development of long-distance gas pipelines in China, gas turbine-driven natural gas compressors are widely used for natural gas pressurization of pipeline transportation. In this paper, the fault shutdown of 39 Rolls-Royce turbine driven compressor sets in 15 gas compressor stations of the 1 st, 2 nd, 3 rd West-East Gas Pipeline and Lunnan-Turpan Pipeline during 2006-2017 was statistically analyzed. The availability, reliability, mean time between failures (MTBF), thousand-hour shutdown times and other indexes were calculated. Then, the occurrence frequency, cause and location of various failures were summarized and analyzed, failure distribution diagrams were statistically studied and the failures with higher occurrence probability were concluded. The statistic results show that the failure of control system and auxiliary equipment is the main cause of the fault shutdown of pipeline compressor sets. Finally, after the causes of several high-frequency failures were analyzed based on the operation maintenance experience, their solutions were put forward. It is conducive to improve operational stability of compressor sets and ensure safe and reliable production.