Abstract

The surge protection may be worth millions of dollars. This is typical price of a centrifugal compressor repair combined with additional cost of nonfunctionality of an industry employing it. This threat is normally secured by application of an antisurge systems. Typically they are activated at predefined working conditions when compressor mass flow rate approaches region affected by the surge. As a result those systems are vastly limiting its operational range usually by a desirable region where compressor attains large pressure ratio. Therefore, a modern antisurge systems are aiming at diminishing this tradeoff by reacting to the real pressure signal gathered at high frequency. This paper presents one of those methods employing singular spectrum analysis. This algorithm has not been widely used for this application, while it was shown herein that it may bring clear distinction between stable and nonstable working condition, even at presurge conditions. Hence in further perspective it may bring anti-surge protection quality, that was not met with another methods.