The purpose of the visit was to witness engine performance and emissions testing (to meet contract guarantees) on behalf of the owner, Eastern Maine Medical Center (EMMC) and purchaser, Cianbro Corporation.
Introduction
An owner representative made two visits to Solar Turbines (Solar) in San Diego, CA for witness testing of the Centaur 50 gas turbine being furnished to EMMC. Jim Boguslaw, project manager for Solar, provided escorted access during the testing. Testing was conducted on November 29 & 30, 2005. Jan Berry of Oak Ridge National Laboratory was present for testing on November 29, 2005. The Solar test engineer was Greg Gorin.
During intervals in the testing schedule, Solar provided a tour of its manufacturing facility and its packing and shipping facility, all located at its industrial plant at 9250 Sky Park Court, San Diego, CA.
Summary
Results of the testing are presented in a report signed and submitted by Greg Gorin of Solar entitled Certified Test Data. The equipment was found to meet applicable requirements of the project definition, the engineering specifications and the contract requirements.
The Centaur 50 is a 4 MW gas turbine package configured with a ~23,000 lb/hr Deltak boiler for combined heat and power. This configuration was selected by Vanderweil Engineers to match EMMC’s load profiles at their 400+ bed hospital in Bangor, Maine. The equipment configuration is connected in modular fashion and can be replicated at other projects that have similar heat and power needs.
Prior to the testing witnessed on 11/29/05, Solar reported that they replaced the starter motor on this Centaur 50 due to failure during pre-testing.
Testing began on 11/29/05 and the unit was found to be ~400 kW short of its guaranteed output. The test team performed boroscope examinations of turbine internals and found nothing unusual. The bypass valve was checked for proper closure and found OK. The air purge for the fuel injectors was also checked. Air purge is needed to clear internal paths of residual fuel oil to prevent coking. Lastly, the test team reloaded the data acquisition software. At this point the test instruments were suspect. Further inspection found a broken hose on the test cell inlet air pressure instrument. Testing resumed after the hose was repaired.
The unit was then tested on natural gas fuel. The corrected output was 4,541 kW compared to 4,460 minimum allowable requirement for this unit (4,184 kW for gas). The T5 setting for the liquid fuel test was 1,320°F. During the gas to liquid fuel transfer test on 11/30/05, a 500 kW drop from full-load was programmed to demonstrate the unit’s ability to dynamically transfer between fuels, and the unit tripped. This test was repeated with the same result. The Solar test team suspected the problem was “a setting issue with K-values”. They indicated that this would be resolved through resetting K-values.