Standards Development

Scope

The ISO 29461 standards specifies methods and procedures to determine the performance of particulate air filters used in air intake filter systems for rotary machinery such as gas turbines, compressors and other internal combustion engines.

The ISO 29461-4 of the standard specifies methods for performance testing of individual filter elements and of the complete filtration system used in Marine and offshore environments. This procedure is intended for filter elements and filter systems which operate at flow rated up to 8000 m3/h per filter element.

Purpose

The use of gas turbines in the oil & gas industry represents one of the most challenging applications for this engine technology. The major constraint of the oil & gas business is to run 24/7 at full load with minimum downtime. In oil & gas activity, it is of prime importance to run the installation as close as possible to 100% of the time with the highest level of efficiency (current production compared to nominal production).

The coastal and offshore environment probably represents the harshest conditions for gas turbines. Humidity, rainfall and wind dust are the most obvious visible conditions that operators face on site. Hidden in the combustion air, alkali such as potassium, sodium or magnesium, as well as sulphur, soot, volatile hydrocarbons, oily vapours, and particles all generate gas turbine issues including compressor fouling, air-cooling passage fouling, vane and blade erosion, and compressor corrosion. Combined with sulphur in fuels, these alkali in combustion air create hot corrosion. Finally, heavy rainfall may induce filter washings that release filtered particles into the compressor. All these phenomena impact the gas turbine availability on site. An operating company aiming for excellence has to strive to minimize lack of availability and performance deterioration in order to make the asset more energy efficient and profitable.

The role of a highly efficient air filtration system is to maintain the engine cleanliness by preventing the introduction of contaminants into the gas turbine air intake. Achieving a high level of engine cleanliness helps maintain engine integrity and efficiency and reduces the need for water washes which generate avoidable downtime.

Today there is no standard test method that sufficiently covers the above mentioned environmental conditions.

This standard would help users and manufactures of air filters to have a common method to evaluate this. The standard would be a support for air filter manufactures to evaluate existing and new developed products in a comparable way. For end users it can be used to compare different products and support the selection of adequate products to be used in their operation.