Air Products, a global air separation company, has two dry-running hydrogen compressors at its South African plant Vanderbijlpark in operation.
They experienced maintenance expenses, replacing wear parts every month, high leakages and power wastage. In addition, the company suffered product losses of up to 20% for the last 12 years.
Burkhardt carried out a root cause analysis of the compressor, redesigned second stage packing case assemblies, created a new piston ring set, refurbished the piston rod and renewed the cylinder liner.
Johan Maartens, Air Products, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa: “We didn’t think that this level of performance was possible! Burckhardt Compression diagnosed the issue swiftly and executed the repairs with precision. Our second compressor was booked in for the same refurbishment and we will be involving Burckhardt Compression in many more overhaul projects in other facilities, based on the remarkable results of this project.”
Customer benefits:
The compressors have run for 22 months without incident Production losses dropped from 20% to 2% Internal leakage was stopped Emissions reduced Energy consumption has been reduced per m3 gas compressed by 25%. An increase in lifetime of wearing parts