Reasons You Should Seek Gas Turbine Inspection and Repair Services

Gas turbines are a type of internal combustion engine that converts air and fuel to electric currents to power the turbines, producing power. It’s a widely used technology because of its versatility when it comes to fuel use, in that, it uses different kinds of fuels — Both natural and synthetic.

Gas Turbine Inspection and Repair

Inspecting turbines is a job for the experts. Companies that choose to use gas turbines to generate power for their industrial use must have a comprehensive turbine maintenance program to ensure machine efficiency and reliability. This maintenance covers different areas of a turbine and it’s auxiliary components, and it’s categorized into:

• Preventative Maintenance

is a reliability-oriented based program that identifies failure errors and implements mitigation techniques through proactive replacements and inspection.

• Deficient Maintenance

is a failure mitigation-based program that identifies deficiencies and applies remedies during a planned outage.

• Corrective maintenance

is also a failure-based program and focus on addressing component failure with significant damage.

Inspecting turbines is crucial as its often the main revenue-generating component in a production line. A robust and effective turbine maintenance program should easily predict failures and offer guidelines for repairs, as implemented under a preventative maintenance program. Essentially, most times you’ll have to assess specific components and consider replacing defective parts to reduce power outage. Effective preventative maintenance based programs can eliminate the need for corrective maintenance on turbomachinery, which is a costly part of the repairs.

Maintenance Inspections

A detailed inspection and diagnostic assessment offer a reliable analysis of gas turbine equipment and their auxiliary components. How a gas turbine performs directly impacts the company’s operations, and it’s important to monitor all maintenance parameters to know what’s working and what’s not in uncovering system deficiencies. The primary goal is to correct deficiencies using data-driven analysis of inspection and assessment results with the aim of eliminating possible outage.

Combustion Section Inspection, Parts Removal and Repairs

A key component of turbomachinery like a gas turbine is the hot combustion section, and it’s what determines the service life as well as the efficiency of a gas turbine engine. The maintenance process in this section involves a thorough inspection of specific combustion components such as liners, cans and tubes. Things to look out for include exhaust leaks, cracks, hotspots, nozzle blockages, damaged blades, localized overheating, excess wear and erosion.

Gas turbines used in a saline environment or other corrosive chemicals, experts advise on cleaning the turbine with a chlorinated solvent that eliminates any moisture content on the engine. Parts replacements can be costly, be vital especially if the damage is considerable.

Hot Gas Path Inspection

While the hot combustion section of the gas turbine is considered the most vital when it comes to inspecting turbines, the entire path where hot gases and high temperature is discharged is also highly monitored. A comprehensive inspection is done on specific components including:

• Turbine Nozzles
• Bearings
• Blades
• Tubes
• Shrouds, etc.

Borescope Inspection

Boroscope inspection of gas turbines is an effective method of deriving a through turbine engine assessment of the innermost components such as the hot combustion section, gas path, or the bearings. Such components are virtually impossible to inspect manually without requiring intensive parts retrieval and disassembly process, which would mean long hours of downtime since the entire casing has to be removed when the machine is inoperational.

Boroscope turbine inspection involves the use of either rigid or flexible cable mounted with a camera and lighting together with a monitor to display the inspection pathway. The cables are available in different lengths to allow for even long coverage inspections. Inspecting turbines using the borescope technique eliminates the need for manually disassembling the machine, cutting down on the cost of labor and maintenance costs.

Gas Turbine Component Replacement and Repair

Generally, turbine engine components can be replaced, repair or refurbished through a number of processes that help restore original metallurgical and structural properties for improved performance and enhanced equipment life. Meanwhile, there are several maintenance based programs businesses can adopt to remain competitive based on facility reliability.