Development of a loss pareto for a rotating spool compressor using high-speed pressure measurements and friction analysis

Abstract

A rotating spool compressor is a new compressor technology that was recently introduced by Kemp et al. in 2008. To accelerate the development of the technology, a breakdown of the key losses within the 5th generation device is presented. The losses include indicated losses associated with leakage and over/under compression due to valves and porting. These losses are obtained using high-speed pressure measurements to obtain an indicator diagram of the 5th generation device. Additionally, frictional losses associated with the key sealing elements and moving components are calculated. An experimental validation of the spool seal friction sub-model is presented. All of these losses are combined into Pareto of losses for the 5th generation spool compressor. This Pareto identified the spool seals, compression and discharge flow losses, and the friction of the Top Dead Center interface as losses to be addressed in future designs. Using this information efforts to improve these components were integrated into a 6th generation spool compressor. This generation recorded an overall isentropic efficiency of over 80% for a net improvement of nearly 15 percentage points over the 5th generation spool compressor.