Session: 20-01: Compressor Operation and Process Design

Paper Number: 153925

CFD Evaluation and Optimization of Oil Tank Fluid Dynamics For Turbomachinery Lubrication System 

The modern turbo-machinery market sets constantly new challenges for manufacturers to be competitive, pushing the need to introduce new technological solutions or optimize the existing ones at their maximum level. Each sub-system that sustains the turbomachinery train operation, such as the Lube Oil system, has its own peculiarities and constraints. In particular, the industrial market requires a strong reduction of cost and lead time, maintaining the same main functionalities and possibly simplifying the configuration layout and the maintenance procedure.

When designing a Lube Oil Console, one of the main requirements is given in the form of minimum retention time, which is normally estimated simply by dividing the tank volume by the design flow rate. This parameter should synthetically ensure a proper degassing effectiveness of the system, in order to avoid cavitation issues on the oil pumps. However, a more detailed study on this topic is beneficial to understand the real behavior of the oil flow inside the Lube Oil tank and to assess its capability to remove air bubbles within the entire volume.

For this reason, a dedicated series of CFD analyses was performed to study the flow structure, to estimate the real retention time and the related degassing effectiveness. In order to save time and cost, a simplified numerical approach was used, developing a fast method to perform the assessment in all projects. This approach required a fine-tuning of the computational parameters, comparing the results with available experimental data that were used for the validation of the methodology.

The analysis results showed that the real traveling time of the oil is lower than the theoretical retention time, but the related degassing capability is sufficient, leaving space for potential future alternative conceptual configurations.

Presenting Author: Gabriele Lucherini Baker Hughes

Presenting Author Biography: After earning my Master's Degree in Aerospace Engineering at Università di Pisa and a Short Training Program at von Karman Institute of Fluid Dynamics in Belgium, I moved to Torino to work for FIAT, the biggest automotive company in Italy. One year later I joined Baker Hughes in Firenze, where I started to work on gas turbines as fluid dynamics and CFD specialist. During the last 10 years I have worked and gained experience in all kinds of applications for gas turbines, developing a strong knowledge in ventilation and cooling systems and trying to drive new technological solutions. Additionally, I gained expertise in the field of safety, especially related to applications where hydrogen is used as main fuel.

Authors:

Gabriele Lucherini Baker Hughes
Nicola Tammaro Baker Hughes
Marco Fiesoli Baker Hughes
Rajnish Kumar Singh Baker Hughes