GE

Energy

OptiComp:
Integrated Compressor Control Suite
Pushing the Boundaries
When it comes to getting the most out of your process and plant
assets, nothing matters more than turbomachinery control and
protection. Given today’s competitive realities, more and more
Integrated compressor controls:
• Upstream
users are driving their process compressors towards maximum
— Gas gathering/processing plants
efficiency. That means machines must be able to operate much
— Gas re-injection
closer to their surge limits allowing for wider process turndown.
• Midstream
Is it possible to operate your process without surge and at the same — Pipeline booster compression
time achieve high efficiency? The answer is a resounding yes with — NGL Processing
OptiComp* Integrated Compressor Control Suite by GE Energy. — LNG

OptiComp is an integrated turbine and compressor control solution • Downstream

— Chemical/Petrochemical plants
that delivers superior compressor surge control, process
— Refineries
performance control, load sharing/balancing, auto sequencing
— Ethylene plants
and other auxiliary controls. OptiComp also integrates fully and
— Fertilizer plants
seamlessly with GE Energy’s Mark* VIeS Emergency Shutdown
System, Bently Nevada* 3500 Vibration Monitoring System, and • Prime Movers
System 1* Machinery Condition Monitoring System. — Industrial and aeroderivative gas turbines
— Steam turbines
Drawing on 25+ years of accumulated domain knowledge in — Electric motors (fixed or variable speed)
turbine and compressor controls, in gas processing and pipelines,
• Compressors & Blowers
GE offers a comprehensive and scalable solution with superior
— Centrifugal
control software running on our fast and reliable Mark VI/MarkVIe
— Axial
control platforms. GE also provides the mechanical modifications,
actuator/valve retrofits, and hydraulics and servo replacement. • Auxiliary Systems
Further, GE can extend control and protective functions for — Lube oil
equipment beyond the basic machine train, such as associated — Seal oil

auxiliaries up to and including the entire compressor station. — Dry Gas Seals
— Station Control and Sequencing

Supporting multiple OEM machines

Our capability extends well beyond the fleet of GE machines. GE
also supports a wide range of prime mover OEMs and virtually
any OEM's compressor. OptiComp fully encompasses the
machine’s controls, protection, vibration, shutdown, and
auxiliary systems such as seal oil and lube oil—providing a
single platform for controlling and monitoring every aspect of
your compressor train.

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The Power of Integration…

…A single platform for compressor Design the HMI displays around your process
and turbine control GE’s flexible Windows® based Human Machine Interface (HMI)
supports informed decision-making, intuitive operator control,
OptiComp integrates turbine controls and protection with compressor
and simple application building. Data is displayed in Imperial or
controls and protection, in a single unified platform for superior
Metric engineering units, including the displayed Compressor
performance and a host of benefits that positively impact your
Map. Standard screens include a Detailed Stage screen for each
Operations and Maintenance bottom line.
compressor stage, a Compressor Train screen for each overall
The independent actions of separate turbine and compressor compressor, a Multi-unit Load Control and Sharing screen, and
drop-ins on driver control screens to fully integrate the anti-surge
controllers can work against each other—adversely impacting
controls and load controls.
process stability and diminishing efficiency. By integrating these
controls into a unified system, they work together seamlessly— Other displays include:
optimizing performance without sacrificing reliability. The result is • Unit Overviews
enhanced compressor function, increased throughput productivity,
• Turbine detailed displays
and increased stability in your process or pipeline.
• Compressor detailed displays
• Start/Stop Sequencing
• Dynamic Compressor Maps
Eight Ways to Enhance Your • Alarms/Trips/Sequence Of Events
Operations with GE’s OptiComp Project-specific and customized screens are also supported.
Integrated Compressor Control Suite
• Improved Process Control – Increased process
turndown minimizes recycle or blow-off.

• Improved Surge Control – Greater immunity to sudden

load disturbances and process gas inlet variations.

• Smoother Start-ups – One vendor means smoother

design engineering, and well coordinated site start-up—
just one cohesive team supporting a faster turnaround.

• Ease of Operation – One common user interface for

monitoring and control with data access from a single
database, and one system for easier maintenance.

• Increased Reliability – Fewer electronics, systems

and interfaces increase the overall running reliability
of the train.
Application software can be displayed as interconnected function
• Smaller footprint – Fewer control panels, fewer HMI blocks or in ladder diagram format. Points can be dragged from
Operator and Engineering workstations, and a single one block to another and dropped to simplify editing. There are
Historian. multiple block libraries to support generic blocks, such as comparators,
and application-specific block libraries for applications such as
• Lower capital investment – Less hardware, less
gas turbines. Math blocks are available to execute a custom
software, less spare parts, less time and money
equation instead of stringing together many blocks. On-line help
spent on training.
is provided for all standard blocks.
• Lower lifecycle costs – Energy and production savings,
reduced downtime, reduced mechanical wear and tear,
fewer electronics to support.

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OptiComp: Optimum Control…
The trending tool can plot hundreds of signals where individual
variables can be masked and unmasked as convenient for viewing.
The dual cursors allow movement of the time axis and automatically The Compressor Control Challenge
calculate the minimum, maximum, difference, and average of
As a compressor operating point approaches its surge
variables between these two points in time. The tool also provides
limit, small changes in pressure result in large changes
video type forward-reverse viewing of the recorded data.
in flow, requiring quicker, more acute corrective action
from the controller. The controller’s embedded algorithms
must be sophisticated enough to allow maximum
compressor operating range, without compromising
protection. This requires algorithms that can reliably
measure distance from Surge as well as respond quickly
and dynamically to changes in process conditions.
GE Energy uses patented anti-surge technology that
delivers both.

Intelligent deadband helps to minimize process

disturbances and protects the recycle valve from
excessive wear. Deadband eliminates spurious recycle
valve action when the operating point fluctuates rapidly
around the surge control line. Intelligent deadband
…It’s in our algorithms
detects when conditions are stable and increases the
Building on the power of integration, OptiComp provides a rich
and powerful set of configurable control functions for effective deadband to further decrease valve action. The deadband
surge control. This comprehensive and layered solution employs is automatically lowered to provide greater sensitivity
powerful, field proven and highly configurable algorithms to meet when the process changes.
your process requirements.
OptiComp gives you the flexibility to use any one of
Effective anti-surge control starts with a primary control response
several criteria for surge detection: Minimum Flow,
that enables the compressor to safely operate closer to the surge
High Rate of Change of Flow, High Rate of Change
line, increasing efficiency and reducing recycle. Adding a proactive
of Speed, and Low Operating Point. External-signal-
response, the Rate Control function monitors how fast the Operating
Point is changing to anticipate when the compressor approaches based detection for Thrust or other available Bently
a surge condition, and acts to begin valve movement before the Nevada Vibration inputs are supported as well.
operating point reaches the surge control line. This helps ease
the compressor into a stable and safe operating condition, and is Automatic gain compensation provides dynamic tuning
particularly effective at countering rapid reductions in flow. under variable operating conditions.

The Boost and Safety Protection functions deliver a stronger

Decoupling isolates anti-surge control from external
protective response when the operating point moves significantly
changes. Five general purpose inputs are available
below the surge control line. And when a surge event does occur,
latched protection from either Surge Minimum Margin or Surge to provide transient feedforward adjustment of the

Minimum Position helps prevent further surge events. anti-surge control based on conditions external to
the anti-surge controller.

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Additional features Load control and load sharing
• Proportional Gain increases the anti-surge control response Many industrial applications, including pipeline compressors, NGL
at low compressor operating points to assist recovery across and LNG applications, and various downstream applications use
the Surge Control Line. compressors operating in parallel or series. In these applications it is
• Multi-Surge Trip and Fast-Acting Solenoid provide additional imperative for the compressor control system to not only maintain
protection for multiple and sustained surges. the target load parameter, but also support efficient sharing of
process gas flow/load among the units. If the system cannot
• Auxiliary Positioning of the recycle valve via up to three
simultaneously perform these two vital functions, the process may
external inputs.
suffer decreased efficiency, unnecessary recycle, and a degraded
• Output Limiting reduces the risk of surge during process immunity to disturbances. This may also exacerbate problems
disturbances. during shut-down and start-up.
• Valve Characterization for non-linear recycle valves.
• Configurable Offset for recycle valves having a dead zone
at zero stroke.
• Recycle Valve Overstroking to provide tight shut-off.
• Protections Override facilitates surge testing by disabling
Boost, Safety Protection Response (SPR) and Operating-
Point-Surge-Detection.
• Purge Switch closes the recycle valve to facilitate purging
through the compressor during startup.

Options
• Hot Recycle Line in processes that use a hot recycle path for
fast and interim anti-surge response when the main recycle
loop (sustained recycle) is very long.
GE uses an integrated peer-to-peer Load Control and Load Sharing
• IGV Effect on the Operating Point when the compressor uses strategy. In the region close to the Surge Control Line the relative
modulating Inlet Guide Vanes for capacity control. distance to the Surge Control Line is used as the load sharing
• Quench Control for cooling recycle gas as applicable. variable; otherwise, control sharing transitions to a selected load
parameter, typically Exhaust Gas Temperature (EGT), Gas Generator
• Suction and Discharge Pressure Override Control assists the
Speed, Steam Flow, or Motor Power. All Load Sharing controllers
primary Pressure/Load/Capacity controls.
exchange their status and process variables via GE's proprietary
• Valve Position Feedback for alarming and valve tripping on high speed Unit Data Highway (UDH) network and each controller
anti-surge and hot recycle valves (if used). then calculates the applicable averages to generate its Load
Control output.

The comprehensive features of the Load Control/Load Sharing

include fully shared or progressive loading, surge valve output
biasing, override control, balancing among different-sized
compressors, units adding and withdrawing, any reasonable
load variable, gain compensation, and Local/Auto load sharing
modes, among others.

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Fast, Flexible and Fault-Tolerant Platform
Every OptiComp solution we deliver is pre-tested and field-proven Controller and I/O features
based on GE Energy’s Mark VI/MarkVIe family of controllers. We
• Self-diagnostics and early failure detection.
can also custom-design a solution to meet your unique process
and control system requirements. This flexibility extends to • All field inputs are filtered to remove noise and accurately
redundancy configurations. Simplex, Duplex and full TMR control the operating point.
architectures are supported. • Intelligent fallback strategies, including a backup, non-flow-
based map and steady state protection against signal failures.
These controllers perform fast execution/scan rates up to 10 msec
to respond effectively to fast turbine fuel control and compressor • Analog Output Failure Monitoring.
anti-surge control loops. Both general purpose and turbine-specific • 1 msec Sequence of Events (SOE).
I/O are supported. Turbine-specific I/O is used for direct interface
to the unique sensors and actuators on turbines. This eliminates a Ethernet is used at all levels including I/O networks, control
substantial amount of interposing instrumentation. As a result, many networks with peer-to-peer communications between units,
potential single point failures are eliminated in the most critical area and plant network interfaces.
for improved reliability and reduced long-term maintenance.

Integrated train control solutions

Plant Data Highway

One Control with Distributed I/O for:
Operator and Bently • Turbine and compressor sensors
Train
Maintenance Nevada • Monitoring, control and protection
Historian
Stations System 1*
• 10, 20, 40 ms frame rates
Unit Data Highway
• Simplex, dual, triple redundant
MKVIeS
MKVIe Bently Nevada
Controller(s)
Controller(s) 3500 VMS
TUV SIL
TUV SIL IO Network – 100 Mbps Ethernet

IO Network – 100 Mbps Ethernet

Speed Vibration Servos Flame Auxiliaries Pressure/ Combustion/ Sequencing Antisurge Process Safety
Temperature DLE Control Shutdown

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7
Experience
Compressors are at the heart of your process. But it’s not just
the machinery that’s at stake—it’s the processes they run, with
production often worth millions of dollars per day. With so much
at stake, you need a company with the multi-industry, multi-OEM,
multi-application experience to ensure the job is done right—
the first time. And, you need someone with the proven software,
hardware reliability, and field support services to keep your
machines—and processes—online 24/7/365

To learn more, ask us about our most recent success stories…

GE Energy
3800 North Wilson Avenue
Loveland, CO
80538 USA
+ 1.970.461.5201 / 800.835.5182
www.ge-energy.com/controlsystems

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GEA-15043 (03/08)