Unocal gas storage showcase for
18,000 hp compression package
By Robert Farmer
Natural gas storage-withdrawal compression plant can
quickly shift from series to parallel operation to match
daily, monthly and seasonal swings in storage and with-
drawal compression loads.
iemens has integrated and
S upgraded its industrial gas
turbine, compressor and steam turbine
operations to fill in and compete for
the 50 MW and smaller range of
services and product line capabilities.
This integration followed the
company’s acquisition of the Alstom
industrial gas turbine product line,
melding this with the previously
acquired Demag Delaval compressor
and steam turbine line.
One of the company showplaces
for the expanded gas turbine products
is a Unocal Canada natural gas
storage plant in British Columbia:
■ Gas turbine. Twin-shaft Siemens
SGT-400 gas turbine (Cyclone) oper-
ates across a 7200 to 9600 rpm speed
range to match gas flow and pressure
variations in storage and withdrawal.
■ Compressor. Demag Delaval
compressor casing houses eight stages,
with an air-to-air intercooler between
two four-stage compressor sections
that can operate in series or parallel.
24 GAS TURBINE WORLD: March-April 2005
■ Operation. Stages operate in se-
ries for high-pressure, low flow and in
parallel for high-flow, low-pressure
rates. Switches automatically from
parallel to series (and back) in about
20 minutes.
The Aitken Creek plant is primari-
ly used to store gas in the summer and
to pump gas into the Duke and Al-
liance Pipeline networks in the winter
during periods of peak demand.
With a design storage capacity of
around 48 billion cubic feet, it is one
of Unocal’s three main midstream and
trade storage assets.
The other two are Alberta Hub
with a capacity of 37 Bcf and Key-
stone in Texas with 2.5 Bcf capacity.
Aitken Creek, built in the 1950s,
has approximately 31,000 hp of natu-
ral gas-fired reciprocating compres-
sor sets operational in addition to the
new gas turbine compressor set.
As demand in the lower 48 has
grown, the plant has seen a consider-
able increase in daily cycles during the
summer, requiring both storage com-
pression work and pipeline pumping.
Both requirements are satisfied by
the Demag Delaval compressor,
model STC-MV 08-8, with its eight-
stage design.
It allows the station to efficiently
match inlet and discharge pressures
when filling the reservoir with gas or
when extracting and compressing
stored gas to pipeline pressure.
Reportedly, it is one of the first
single-body compressors to serve for
this type of application.
Dual-role compressor
“In filling a gas storage facility, when
the reservoir is less than 40% full, the
last 20% incremental volume requires
a significantly higher pressure and
lower flow than initial filling, says
Jim Pederson, Plant Director.
The compressor is staged to
operate in series for higher pressure-
low-flow condition and in parallel for
lower pressure high-flow conditions.
To shift from series to parallel
operation requires shutting down the
turbine, isolating the air-to-air inter-
cooler, and then activating valves for
parallel operation.
All in all, the entire procedure
takes a little less than 20 minutes, say
Unocal operating engineers. It enables
the station to achieve greater oper-
ational efficiency in meeting variable
gas flow and pressure conditions
required daily.
The single-body compressor
design eliminates the complexity of a
multiple compressor train that req-
uires couplings, alignment and often
gearboxes between bodies to achieve
higher speeds required by the last
compressor body.
As noted, Aitken Creek stores
approximately 48 Bcf of gas in a six-
month period of operation. The plant
can compress 15 million to 500
million cubic feet of gas per day into
storage.
The storage reservoir itself can be
pressurized up to 1600 pounds per
square inch.
This compression load can vary
considerably, Pederson notes, from a
200-psi suction pressure and 1100 psi
discharge up to 700-psi suction
pressure and 1600 psi discharge.
exhaust temperature (556°C).
When installed, in August 2001,
Unocal’s Cyclone was one of the ear-
liest of these machines to see service
(the gas turbine design was intro-
duced in late 1997).
It was also the first compressor set
to be assembled, packaged and tested
at the Houston, Texas facility that
Siemens now operates.
Competitive evaluation
Unocal had three bidders for this
project, with Siemens the only
supplier offering a single-body
compressor; the other two proposed
three-body trains.
Pederson notes that in addition to
47 different design-point analyses, the
Siemens single-body compressor de-
sign was the least complicated and
best fit.
The other bidders were Rolls-
Royce, with Cooper Bessemer com-
pressors, and Solar Turbines with its
in-house compressor package design.
In addition, the control package
Siemens offered was an Allen-
Bradley ‘Control Logix’ system, the
same control system used for the ex-
isting Aitken Creek plant equipment.
Normal start-up is fully automatic
and initiated with a single button, and
the time required is a nominal 20 min-
utes.
This allows the dual-mode com-
pressor to shift from series to parallel
operation smoothly.
Site conditions
Because of close proximity to the
Canadian mountains, extreme weather
conditions known locally as ‘chi-
nooks’ can trigger 40° to 60°F tem-
perature fluctuations (4° to 15°C)
within six hours.
The Allen-Bradley turbine control
system is set to rapidly compensate

Variable duty
Unocal’s gas turbine compressor
package operates about 4,000 hours a
year, half the time filling and the
other half pumping gas out of storage
into the pipeline systems.
But the duty cycle is highly
variable, nothing like 2,000 hours
filling followed by 2,000 hours of
discharge.
Changes from filling to removing
from storage can occur daily, de-
pending on the pipeline demand
downstream.
These load swings can require the
gas turbine to vary between 7200 rpm
part-load speed up to 9600 rpm,
which is 101% of rated maximum
continuous speed.
Twin-shaft Cyclone is nominally
rated 18,000 shp and 7030 Btu/hp-hr
(13.4 MW and 36.2% efficiency) on
natural gas fuel with no losses. Gas turbine compressor. Siemens SGT400 gas turbine (aka Cyclone) driving a
It has an 86.8 lb/sec mass flow Demag Delaval STC-MV 08-8 compressor. Single-body eight-stage compressor
(39.4 kg), 2282°F turbine rotor inlet houses two four-impeller stage components which operate in series or parallel, de-
temperature (1250°C), and 1032°F pending on flow and pressure requirements.

GAS TURBINE WORLD: March-April 2005 25

for the impact of such ambient tem-
perature swings on air flow through
the turbine.
Over a temperature range of -40°F
in the winter to 80°F in the summer,
the gas turbine dry low NOx system
is able to achieve 9 to 12 ppm limit
on NOx emissions.
Due to harsh weather conditions,
the gas turbine is installed inside a
building, with an oil cooler config-
ured to use indoor or outdoor cooling
through a series of articulating lou-
vered panels.
The cooling system automatically
switches on or off, as determined by
the ambient air temperature, to main-
tain a safe lube oil operating tempera-
ture.
Filtration for combustion air and
ventilation air for the enclosure fea-
tures pneumatic pulsation to clean the
filters.
Since the Cyclone gas turbine
Aitken Creek. Station has around 48 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage capaci-
ty, has been in service since the 1950s. Until the 18,000-hp gas turbine compressor
installation was added (building on the left) in 2001, the station was powered by
31,000 hp of gas engine recips which are still operational.
26 GAS TURBINE WORLD: March-April 2005
driver is rated down to -40°F (-40°C),
there is no requirement for air inlet
heating.
The enclosed heated, ventilated
and air-conditioned building which
houses the unit allows maintenance
and service in the winter or summer,
as required.
Operations and service
Unocal has a level 2 maintenance and
service contract with Siemens that
includes all parts and a spare core
engine.
Its nearest major service center is
at Anchorage, Alaska. But there is a
local service provider in Fort St. John,
BC that handles day-to-day service
and troubleshooting under subcon-
tract to Siemens.
Siemens remotely monitors gas
turbine compressor data from a diag-
nostic service center in Lincoln, Eng-
land that is tied into the Aitken Creek
control system.
Mc Donald Engineering in Cal-
gary designed the program control
software to interface with the opera-
tional control system at Aitken for a
smooth transfer of data.
As standard operating procedure,
the remote online monitoring center
at Lincoln does not routinely transmit
data to the Aitken plant operators.
Instead, it sends data reports to a
Siemens office in Anchorage, Alaska
for storage, analysis and trending.
Aitken has its own monitoring
system, but nothing nearly as sophis-
ticated (and complex) needed for a
complete and detailed diagnostics
analysis.
The operators automatically re-
ceive a regular monthly performance
report. They are alerted only if the on-
line monitoring indicates a potential
problem that warrants onsite action.
Generally, decisions on servicing
scope and timing are determined by
Siemens maintenance specialists
based on remote performance and da-
ta trending analysis.
However, the operators at the site
can do their own online troubleshoot-
ing in the event of a malfunction or
problem.
Room for another
The gas turbine and compressor order
was awarded in May 2000 for quick
delivery. It was installed and ready to
start operation on August 1, 2001.
Pederson says he was particularly
impressed with the performance of
the Siemens compressor manufactur-
ing and project team to meet his pro-
ject schedule.
The Aitken Creek turbine installa-
tion has provision for a future turbine
compressor addition, depending on
future storage and withdrawal load
growth.
Both the compressor and gas tur-
bine have performed “as required,
when required” during 2004, he re-
ports, logging close to 4600 hours of
operation.
As of 2004 year-end, the gas tur-
bine had accumulated a total of 390
starts and 15,078 fired hours of opera-
tion. ■