DISCUSSION T. E.

Blehar1 1 Based on previously conducted gas property method comparison studies, it has been my experience that work factors that deviate from 1.0 by more than 1.5 percent are indicative of erroneous or inconsistent gas properties or equations of state in that particular region. That is, by utilizing multiple gas property methods, it often becomes apparent that the gas method that yielded a 0.89 or 0.94 work factor (as in Mr. Huntington's examples) was, in fact, inconsistent with other more applicable gas methods. The more accurate gas property methods resulted in work factors nearer 1.0, and in fact values of polytropic head and efficiency nearer the design and expected values. The differences in these results, then, were functions of the different gas property methods and not the Schultz equations. For this reason, it would appear to be more beneficial to select examples with gas property methods that resulted in work factors nearer 1.0 for Mr. Huntington's comparisons. This may yield a more valid comparison. 2 The work factor deviations occur most frequently over large compression paths. As Mr. Huntington has subdivided the compression path into shorter polytropic paths (which, in fact, more closely approach the isentropic path in the extreme), a more valid comparison would be to evaluate the Schultz method over these same smaller intervals, and sum the results. In this manner the work factor should approach 1.00 for each of the shorter paths and yield more accurate results or minimally a more valid comparison. 3 The area of application and gas property evaluation relative to the "dome" or critical point has a significant effect on the long path of compression versus the short path evaluation due to large variations in gas properties in that region. Therefore, the area of application and range of gas property accuracies for that area would be of value in assessing the significance of the differences in calculation methods. That is, if the gas properties are highly inaccurate in the area of evaluation, then a 1.0 percent difference in calculation methods may not be a significant value. In conclusion, I would like to compliment Mr. Huntington on his efforts to identify a more accurate method to evaluate centrifugal compressor performance. The range of pressure, temperature, and gas mixture applications and required accuracies has changed considerably since the original Schultz publication. It is a credit to Mr. Huntington that he has devoted considerable time and effort to question, investigate and improve those methods. As a final note, if further comparisons are conducted relative to my above comments, I would be interested in discussing those results with Mr. Huntington. Author's Closure Mr. Blehar's comments generally deal with two areas of concern: firstly, the question of the use of appropriate gas property methods and data and secondly, the large deviations of the Schultz polytropic head factors from 1.0. While Mr. Blehar is correct in stating that the use of inaccurate gas properties may result in significant errors in the/-factor, it is not clear that deviations in / f r o m 1.0 are alone sufficient to condemn a gas property method as inaccurate. If this were true, our thermodynamicist colleagues would have a simple and efficient method to evaluate equations of state. In addition, they would always conclude that the perfect gas equations were best since they are quaranteed to give/-factors equal to 1.0. Realistically, one must accept that some comSenior Engineer, Compressor Design and Development, General Electric Company, Fitchburg, MA 01420.

pression services, especially high-pressure services where compressibility factor changes may be 30 percent or more between inlet and discharge, may have /-factors that deviate significantly from 1.0. These deviations are simply an indication of the nonideality of the compressed gas for the given conditions. The scope of the paper has been limited to a comparison of the three simple (i.e., hand calculable) polytropic head/efficiency calculation methods versus the precise reference (numerical integration) method and did not include an evaluation of the effects of various gas property evaluation methods. In fact, the use of a single accurate source for gas properties for all of the methods was intended to eliminate gas property deviations as a source of comparative error between the methods evaluated and the reference method. However, preliminary studies to this work were carried out using equations of state (Redlich-Kwong and RedlichKwong-Soave) that are considered to be less accurate than the Lee-Kesler equation of state that was finally used. These preliminary studies showed similar relative comparisons among the methods as those given in the paper. This validated the use of a single gas property source to eliminate gas property deviations as a source of relative error between the methods. Regarding the specific source of gas data for the examples cited in the paper, each calculation method demonstrated (and this includes the reference method) used an identical equation of state with identical basic gas data (critical pressure, tem-

l'1

PRESSURE (PSIA)

Fig. 1 Specific volume versus pressure along the constant efficiency polytropic path calculated by the reference method for case 4

Fig. 2 Percentage deviation from the reference of the specific volume versus pressure paths predicted by the three simple methods

Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power

OCTOBER 1985, Vol. 107/877

Copyright 1985 by ASME

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perature, specific heat function, etc.) for its calculations. The equation of state used was the Lee-Kesler equation cited in the paper and recommended by the Reid, Sherwood, and Prausnitz text also cited. The source of basic gas data for Refrigerant-12 was from Dupont literature on Freon while the other basic gas data for carbon dioxide and ethylene were taken from the Exxon proprietary gas data library which has been used and refined over the many years of Exxon's gas handling experience. Finally, the equation of state and basic data were coded into a single gas property computer subprogram to provide functionally continuous gas property evaluations for each of the methods. Mr. Blehar also states his belief that the comparison of the Schultz method to the reference method is perhaps not valid since the reference subdivides the polytropic path into many short paths while the Schultz method is asked to negotiate the entire path in one step. It is clear that subdividing the polytropic path significantly reduces the gas property variation along each subpath and makes calculation of polytropic head much more accurate. This is precisely the idea behind the reference calculation method. What is not clear is how Mr. Blehar would use this subdivision technique to improve the Schultz method without completely duplicating the calculation procedures used by the reference method. Therefore, since this "subdivided" Schultz method and the reference method would be essentially identical, comparisons between them would be pointless.

A. A. Fozi2 I would like to congratulate the author for his contribution to better understanding of the polytropic analysis. The method described in the paper as the "reference method" does in fact yield the most accurate evaluation of the polytropic values as defined by the equation edh = VdP (e = const) John Schultz, in his original paper, showed an approximate integration method by use of auxiliary polytropic constants in and n. Mr. Huntington proposes to do the same by numerical methods utilizing computers for achieving very high accuracies. In this discussion I would like to point out that such accuracies may not be necessary in view of the inherent simplifying assumptions of the application of the polytropic analysis to the evaluation of gas compressor test results. Volume flow through a compressor is continually changing (decreasing) and, therefore, the inlet stage of a multistage compressor is larger (higher specific speed) than the exit stage. This means that some stages having optimum specific speed will be more efficient than other stages. Depending on where these efficient stages are located, the actual path of compression will lie to the left (often) or to the right (seldom) of the hypothetical polytropic path. A good example is the ethylene compressor case number 3 of Mr. Huntington's paper. In this case a typical compressor with six stages may perform, on a per-stage basis, as follows:

1st stage 2nd stage 3rd stage 4th stage 5th stage 6th stage

Pressure (psia) 362.5- 609.2 609.2- 980.3 980.3-1515.4 1515.4-2357.4 2357.4-3262.6 3262.6-4351.2

Temperature (F) 98.3-171.7 171.7-245.2 245.2-317.3 317.3-390.6 390.6-449.9 449.9-503.3

Polytropic efficiency 0.8098 0.7593 0.7159 0.7309 0.6402 0.6368

Since it is clear from the discussion above that Mr. Blehar agrees (at least in concept) with the reference method, his comments do not address the major focus of the paper which is simply the order-of-magnitude accuracy improvement possible with the new polytropic calculation method (equation (22)) developed in the paper over the previous "simple" methods in comparisons to the very precise reference. To understand the reasons for the better accuracy of the new method, it is best to look at the definition of polytropic head given by equation (2). This equation simply represents the area under the curve of specific volume versus pressure along the polytropic path. This functional curve as produced by the reference method for example case 4 is shown in Fig. 1. The area under this curve is the reference head. The simple polytropic methods, through their assumptions and basic equations, either explicitly or implicitly approximate this curve in order to calculate head. Deviations between these approximate curves and the true curve may lead to errors in polytropic head and efficiency. Figure 2 is a plot of these percentage deviations for all three of the simple methods presented in the paper for example case 4. As can be easily seen, the Schultz and the Mallen and Saville curves (labeled as PTC and M&S) deviate significantly from the reference curve (Fig. 1) in both bounded area and curve shape. In contrast, the new method (labeled as RAH) is barely discernible from the zero-error axis and thus shows that it best matches the true polytropic path and will produce the most accurate results with consistency. 878/ Vol. 107, OCTOBER 1985

Using an equation of state3 the total polytropic head is equal to 88,367 (ft-lb/lbm) compared to the value of 91,525 obtained by Mr. Huntington. Another compressor having a different number of stages, different diameter, or of a different manufacture will have another interstage characteristic and, therefore, a different polytropic head and efficiency for the same inlet and discharge conditions. This result should not be surprising since the path of compression lies to the left of the constant efficiency path (i.e., reference method) when plotted on a Mollier chart. The significance of the foregoing is that a mathematically accurate polytropic analysis is no nearer to reality than the calculations based on the extra assumption of a polytropic compression constant (i.e., J. Schultz' method). Again, this is so because the typical gas compressor does not follow a constant polytropic efficiency path. Once a simplifying assumption such as constant e has been introduced, the accuracy of calculations will be limited and may not be arbitrarily increased. Any argument as to interpretation of test results may be settled early if the parties involved agree between themselves which method of polytropic analysis is acceptable to both. In such a case, the "reference" method is only as valid as any other method. It should be noted that the isentropic analysis
2 Senior Engineer, Gas Compressor and Systems Dynamics, Solar Turbines Incorporated, San Diego, CA 92138-5376. 3 The equation of state used was a modified Soave-RK. The difference in head calculation is due largely to the "assumed" versus "actual" compression path rather than the choice for the equation of state.

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(not to be confused by the isentropic perfect gas relations) is superior to the polytropic analysis since it is not a path function and is not ambiguous. The special utility of the polytropic analysis is the correlation between test and field measurements and is another issue. There are other factors in the PTC-10 code which introduce a higher percentage of errors in the calculations than the method of polytropic analysis; for example, the accuracy of test measurements, the accuracy of gas property evaluation, and the method for performance correction due to Reynolds number effects. With respect to revising the PTC-10 code, we believe that the method of Reynolds number correction introduces largest errors, and thus is in greater need of revision. I would like to conclude these remarks by, again, acknowledging the analytical achievements in Mr. Huntington's paper.

stand and field results for all gases. The other calculation methods discussed, including the Schultz method, deviate from the true polytropic path for nonperfect gases and therefore cannot provide as good a correlation. Mr. Fozi also suggests through his hypothetical stage-bystage analysis of Case No. 3 that major differences (roughly 3.5 percent) in calculated head may be attributed to the nonconstant nature of the actual compression path efficiency and not to gas property evaluation errors. I must disagree with this and state that the bulk of this calculated head difference is due to gas property errors. Using Mr. Fozi's pressure and temperature breakpoints for each stage and the identical gas property evaluation method used in the paper, the following stage performances are found:

Polytropic head (ft) 1st stage 2nd stage 3rd stage 4th stage 5th stage 6th stage Net Table 2A Results (Ref) 14584 14872 15149 17279 14405 14439 90728 91525

Polytropic efficiency (percent) 81.08 76.88 73.67 77.02 68.87 69.42 74.34 74.99

Author's Closure Mr. Fozi's comments raise several important issues concerning the evaluation and use of PTC-10 test results. He correctly points out that compressors generally do not exhibit a constant efficiency throughout the gas compression and therefore the PTC-10 assumption of a constant efficiency is a simplification. However, this assumption is valid because the PTC-10 performance test is used as a flange-to-flange evaluation and seeks to find an average efficiency that represents the compressor as a whole. It is not concerned with individual stage performances but only their cumulative operation both on the test stand and in the field. The advantages of the two methods introduced in the paper are that they accurately and consistently represent the true (i.e., constant efficiency) polytropic compression path that is basic to PTC-10 and will provide a precise correlation of test

This shows a 0.9 percent difference in head and average efficiency due to the nonconstant efficiency but a 2.6 percent difference due to the different gas property evaluation methods. In this example, the differences in calculated head due to changing versus constant efficiency are not unexpected or of any concern because of the intended use of the PTC-10 results as discussed above. However, it is a major concern that such large discrepancies in gas property evaluations are possible as these may have a serious impact on the design and successful field operation of a compressor. Finally, I would like to gratefully thank both Mr. Blehar and Mr. Fozi for their excellent and thought-provoking discussions. Both have pointed out significant areas of concern in the evaluation of compressor performance tests. It is clear that all major areas of concern should be addressed by future PTC-10 revisions including the polytropic calculation method as discussed in this paper, Reynolds number effects, and updated gas property evaluation methods and data.

Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power

OCTOBER 1985, Vol. 107/879

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