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Oil, Gas, Petrochemical Industry News
News Release from: GE Oil and Gas | Subject: Hot gas expander
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial
Team on 14 September 2007
Hot gas expander reduces refinery energy
costs
GE Oil and Gas hot gas expander technology works with a refinery waste gas recovery system to help refineries significantly reduce energy costs, while also lowering emissions
The hot gas expander for the GE Power Recovery Air Train features the latest GE technology and meets the rigid standards of ecomagination, the GE corporate initiative to address challenges such as the need for cleaner, more efficient sources of energy, reduced emissions and abundant sources of clean water GE ecomagination products are evaluated for their ability to significantly and measurably improve environmental and operating performance for the customer
This article was originally published on Processingtalk on 6 Sep 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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"Energy accounts for about 50% of the total operating costs for a refinery," said Jeff Nagel, vice president-global services for GE Oil and Gas: "Wasting flue gas, which is largely air and is a by-product of the refinery processes, means wasting a tremendous opportunity to reduce energy costs and the carbon footprint of the entire refining industry.
A Power Recovery Air Train equipped with a GE expander can maximize the use of this waste gas to produce some of the power a refinery needs to operate".
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An average-sized GE expander for power recovery system is designed to recover 18 megawatts of power, thus avoiding the use of the same amount of energy from the grid, which can save a refinery operator nearly USD9 million in electricity costs each year.
The technology also avoids the emissions of 244,000 metric tons of CO2 each year - the equivalent of removing 44,000 US passenger cars from the roads for a year.
Compared to a system without the new GE expander, an 18-megawatt Power Recovery Train with the new expander is designed to recover more than 148,000 megawatt-hours of electricity from waste energy every year, or the amount used by 13,900 US households.
Previously, power recovery air trains were equipped with older expander technology that was unable to meet customer requirements for four to five years of uninterrupted run time.
Benefiting from improvements in materials and aerodynamics achieved over the past decade, the latest GE expander can withstand heavy crude oil corrosion and erosion to deliver improved reliability and availability and meet the four to five year performance standard.
"This capability sets our waste gas recovery solution apart from others available in the industry," Nagel noted.
The development of the new hot gas expander technology was supported by various GE businesses including the Global Research Centre.
It is the third GE Oil and Gas product to receive ecomagination certification, joining the BCL 304 series centrifugal compressor and the PII UltraScan Duo pipeline inspection tool.
"With our ecomagination program, we strive to introduce and modify technologies that will be better for the environment.
It's good for nature, for people and for business," said Claudi Santiago, a GE senior vice president and president and CEO of GE Oil and Gas.
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