GE Energy on September 9 announced that Chevron El Segundo has selected its machinery and condition monitoring technology to help improve plant equipment reliability. The monitoring system will help ensure the smooth operation of its hydrotreating process unit at the Chevron El Segundo Refinery, located in Southern California. It also will enable plant maintenance personnel to be more proactive in managing the health of their critical machinery assets, including the hydrogen booster reciprocating compressors.
Under the scope of this project, GE will supply Bently Nevada 3500 series systems for continuous machinery protection and monitoring and the System 1 software platform for on-line machinery condition monitoring. GE will install and commission the systems on two groups of four existing hydrogen booster Dresser Rand reciprocating compressors. In addition, Chevron has recently placed orders for GE’s technology on six new reciprocating compressors at the refinery’s flare gas recovery unit and continuous catalytic regenerative unit.
“Plant equipment reliability is of utmost importance to the overall operations of the Chevron El Segundo Refinery,” said Charles Mooneyham, leader, Chevron machinery projects, Chevron El Segundo Refinery. “GE’s Bently Nevada condition monitoring solution will help us better understand the condition of our assets and enable us to improve the maintenance management in our plant.”
“GE Energy has more than 40 years of experience in monitoring reciprocating compressors with more than 50,000 installations around the globe,” said Brian Palmer, vice president of GE Energy’s optimization and control business. “GE has the plant and field experience combined with application knowledge to understand Chevron El Segundo’s machinery and to provide the company with the best options to enhance reliability at their refinery.”
About Chevron El Segundo Refinery
The Chevron El Segundo Refinery is designed to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and refines nearly 270,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Starting in 2007, Chevron El Segundo began a site-wide effort to improve plant equipment reliability. One tactic to fulfill this strategy was to seek out improved condition monitoring technologies in order to help the refinery better protect, detect and diagnose a wide range of challenging mechanical malfunctions on all critical assets including their hydrogen booster reciprocating compressors.
About GE Energy
GE Energy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and energy delivery technologies, with 2007 revenue of $22 billion. Based in Atlanta, GE Energy works in all areas of the energy industry including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy; renewable resources such as water, wind, solar and biogas; and other alternative fuels. Numerous GE Energy products are certified under ecomagination, GE’s corporate-wide initiative to aggressively bring to market new technologies that will help customers meet pressing environmental challenges.
