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In this episode of the TurboTime podcast, Daniel Tegtmeier, Director of EthosEnergy’s Performance Center, talks about remote operations and monitoring. 

TurboTime Podcast: Remote Monitoring with EthosEnergy

In part two of this episode of the TurboTime Podcast, Klaus Burn of Ebara Elliott Energy, and Rainer Kurz of RKSBenergy LLC, discuss surge and choke on a compressor map. They explain where they occur on the map, what happens to the compressor when they operate in these extremes, and about transient operation of a compressor.

Brun explained surge: “On the left side of the map you have surge, and on the right side is choke, overload, or stonewall. The most basic definition of surge is the compressor head cannot overcome the system-imposed pressure, i.e., pressure on the outside on the suction and discharge, and the compressor is not making enough head to overcome that pressure differential. So instead of the flow moving forward through the compressor, the flow suddenly turns around and goes backward through the machine until that pressure balances again, at which point the machine can overcome that head. Then it starts a process again. And that becomes a circular process—you get into these surge cycles, and it's a fairly complex thing.”

Kurz emphasizes that surge is an interaction between the compressor and the system around it, “meaning the compressor by itself doesn't surge,” he said. “If the system forces the compressor to make more pressure ratio than under whatever conditions the compressor is going to make, then the gas thus what it wanted to do in the first place, which is go from the high pressure to low pressure, meaning it goes backward through the compressor. The tricky part with that is on the compressor map, we show what the compressor does. So, the map by itself and that surge line on the map is essentially something you derive from the compressor performance.”

The Myth Busters, Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz, talk about surge and choke on a compressor map. 

TurboTime Podcast: Part II: Surge and Choke with the Myth Busters 

In this two-part episode of the TurboTime Podcast, Klaus Burn of Ebara Elliott Energy, and Rainer Kurz of RKSBenergy LLC, discuss compressor maps. The duo explains what compressor maps are, what they are useful for, how they fit into the process, and where head, flow, and efficiency islands fit in.

“In its most basic form, a compressor map is a graphical representation of how a centrifugal compressor behaves,” Brun said. “It's somewhat of an oversimplification because more factors play into it; but overall, it gives an accurate representation of what a compressor does within the system that it operates. A standard compressor map has an X and Y axis. The Y axis has something called head—isentropic or polytropic head. Sometimes you also see pressure ratio or a discharge pressure or a fixed section pressure. On the X axis is flow, and most of the time it’s volumetric flow. Sometimes you see mass flow, but that's not very common. Compressor maps also have a surge line on the left and on the right side of the map you have a choke or stonewall area. And finally, you have efficiency islands, and they correspond to the efficiency of the compressor. Not all compressor maps show them.”

Kurz further described efficiency islands: “Efficiency islands refer to the fact that these maps are three-dimensional, but we can only put them in two dimensions on paper. The three axes you want to display are head, flow, and efficiency. You use the efficiency lines in a very similar way to elevation lines. Also, the coordinates of the map that are directly affected by the compressor aerodynamics are head and flow. You can translate head into pressures or pressure ratios, and you can translate actual flow into mass flow, but ultimately what happens aerodynamically in the compressor is described by head and actual flow.”

The Myth Busters, Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz, talk about compressor maps—what they are, how they are generated, and what they are useful for. 



TurboTime Podcast: Part I: Compressor Maps with the Myth Busters 

During this episode of the TurboTime podcast, we discuss digital ecosystems with Jim Nyenhuis, the Performance Consultant at Emerson’s Power and Water Solutions Business. We focus on software, including AI-based software, detection and monitoring technologies, software’s influence on a turbomachine’s life, as well as cybersecurity and potential risks that power plants are exposed to.

Q: How does a digital ecosystem improve operational efficiency, plant safety, etc.?

 Digital technologies allow us to address all those issues. We work with customers to understand what operational efficiency means to them based on their objectives. Plant safety is without question built into everything we do. We want to understand and leverage what the underlying technology can tell us and let that information feed up through the digital ecosystem—how do we understand what's working well at the plant level, how do we identify if there are control problems or if individual pieces of equipment are having issues? A lot of that information is lying within the automation infrastructure, and I don't think we've leveraged that to the degree we want to. We find many customers do not understand the performance characteristics of their closed-loop controls or areas to drive additional improvement, efficiencies, etc.

Performance and control management is another big area that we look at. Our information, such as the automation system, will oftentimes track what operators are doing within the system. In the past, that information was stored in text-based logs, but there's a lot of valuable information stored in those log files that if we expose that information, we can understand how operators are interfacing with the system during different periods of operation, be it startup, shut down, various operating modes, etc., and based on that we can determine where operators are spending a lot of their time.

In this episode of the TurboTime podcast, we talk about digital ecosystems, including AI-based software, cybersecurity, and more with Jim Nyenhuis from Emerson. 

TurboTime Podcast: Software & Cybersecurity with Emerson 

In this episode of the TurboTime podcast, James Montgomery and John Mason of Rolls-Royce talk about micro-reactors. Microreactors are compact, portable rectors that produce thermal energy, which can be used as heat or converted to electric power. Micro-reactors can be quickly deployed and installed, and when they utilize a responsive design concept, they can prevent overheating and require fewer components, fewer operators, and less maintenance.

Montgomery is the Chief Design Engineer for the Rolls-Royce novel nuclear team in the United Kingdom. He is responsible for the design of the overall micro-reactor plant. Mason is a Systems Design and Integration Technical Specialist working within the Novel Concepts team in Bristol within Future Programs. His responsibilities are around the power-conversion system that goes with micro-reactors—i.e., the turbomachinery that takes heat from the reactor and converts it into usable electrical power.

“Micro-reactors are very small scale, in the range of 1 MW - 10 MW electrical, and that’s compared to a typical grid-supplying power plant that's in the gigawatt range and also with the new generation of small modular reactors that are in the 1/2 GW range, so we're much smaller than that,” Montgomery explained. “We have two potential applications for the microtechnology we're working on in the United Kingdom: The first one is the terrestrial variant for supplying power to different applications on Earth; and the second is the space micro-reactor that has potential applications for the lunar base as part of the space program and, in the longer term, for power and propulsion applications on satellite and deep-space missions.”

Montgomery also explained the process of designing a micro-reactor: “At Rolls Royce, we have a great pedigree in designing complex systems like this, so the first step in that process is to work with potential end users to understand the user requirements and use cases where we can get value from the technology. Then we'll work through the process of preliminary design and size of the plant, understanding what the technology can do and where the technology gaps might be. That then launches us into a technology program to acquire the technologies we need.

“The microreactor plant is really interesting from that point of view because it's genuinely a new product for us at Rolls-Royce as with the rest of the industry,” Montgomery continued. “So, we've pieced together some of our pedigree from the nuclear side and the turbomachinery side that we have developed over many years for aerospace and industrial applications.”

In this episode of the TurboTime podcast, James Montgomery and John Mason of Rolls-Royce talk about micro-reactors. 

TurboTime Podcast: Micro-Reactors with Rolls-Royce

In part two of this episode on digital twins, Myth Busters Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz expand on the applications of a digital twin, its advantages and limitations, and the integration of AI in the platform.

Rainer Kurz highlighted a best-use scenario for digital twin technology: “If you have large fleets of reasonably similar machines, it’s much easier to set up a system of digital twins for condition-based maintenance where you get constant data flow and are able to advise the users on maintenance decisions. It’s actually a very powerful tool.” 

Brun added his thoughts on modern digital twin integration: “The combination of a digital twin with other technologies such as fleet monitoring, forecasting, and condition-based monitoring provides an opportunity to improve the operation of the machine.”

Brun said he’s seen promising work being done with AI. “I recently read a doctoral dissertation from a university in Europe, which was interesting because AI was able to parse the data and come up with some intelligent forecasting of failures and at least, theoretically, improved the availability of the machine,” he said. “Learning algorithms have been around for about 30 years or so, but they’ve really only gotten good in the last five years. Now we’re starting to see AI make inroads into more complex things like compressors, gas turbines, steam turbines, plants, etc. I have no doubt that we’ll see more of this and better AI, but at this point in time it doesn’t replace any operator and it’s in its infancy.”

Kurz continued the discussion on AI applications: “One of the big promises of AI is guiding an operator through the system he’s operating. For example, helping the right warnings to show up at the correct time and giving him the right information. There is not AI that simulates complex systems, it simply augments the capability of the human to help make decisions.”

In part two of this two-part episode, Myth Busters Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz cover the applications of digital twin technology, its advantages and limitations, and pairing it with AI.

TurboTime Podcast: Part 2: Applications/AI for Digital Twins 

In part one of the TurboTime podcast on digital twins, Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz offer a simplistic description to provide a background on the technology. “At its very basic form, it’s a numerical representation of what a piece of equipment does," Brun said. "Of course, with the availability of far more data from our equipment and the availability of things like more computing power and potentially some forms of artificial intelligence, you can make these things really powerful. Ultimately, you build a model on how you think the equipment performs and then use data to determine if it really does what it’s supposed to do.

“The idea is to look at the machine and what it’s doing in the field, look at what the digital twin says it should be doing, and then compare to see if something’s gone wrong,” he continued. “Ultimately, this digital twin is supposed to simulate what the machine is doing, it should get input from the machine, it should correct itself over time—so if the machine is degrading over time, then hopefully the digital twin will figure that out.”

Regarding digital twin technology for gas turbine models, Rainer said: “For example, if you have a mechanical and thermodynamic model of a gas turbine where you can determine temperatures at various points of the machine, based on measured data and certain operating conditions, then you can simulate the remaining life of certain components that are limited by stress factors.”

Rainer continued to offer insight on the varying digital twin models within the turbomachinery industry and the importance of good data: “The tendency is moving away from physics-based toward more statistical, AI-based, big data model now. It is really important to understand that unless you have a lot of data and it’s good data, you have nothing.” 

Brun added: “That’s actually one of the big challenges specific to big data that we as engineers face. Data scientists will tell you to give them enough data and they’ll find all the correlations you want, but then you realize correlation and causation are often two very different things.”

In part one of this two-part episode, Myth Busters Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz provide a background on digital twin technology and how it impacts the turbomachinery industry.

TurboTime Podcast: Part 1: What is a Digital Twin? 

In this episode of the TurboTime podcast, Dr. Mike Shepard, Vice President of Aerospace and Defense at 3D Systems, discusses additive manufacturing, including its background as a fabrication technique in the turbomachinery industry, the role of data, as well as the various types of additive manufacturing. Dr. Shepard also addresses the advantages and disadvantages of this 3D printing technology, including size constraints, dimensional tolerance, etc., and advancements he sees happening in the near future.

"The adoption of additive manufacturing has really been growing in the turbomachinery industry,” Dr. Shepard said. “I'd say that's true in a couple of different ways—not just in the new-build environment where you're getting new construction and new designs, but it's also really important in the refit and aftermarket environment—parts, etc. And there are a lot of different reasons, right? You get design flexibility more than traditional methods. However, it's not going to replace things like CNC, but it's going to powerfully complement them. You also get very complicated geometries, which are possible now. And it's easy to incorporate extra complexity like cooling channels for fluid flow. You can also utilize it to combine a bunch of parts into one, which is super advantageous. We've seen examples where people were able to go from 200 components sometimes into one, and you can also iterate very quickly. So, these are the types of advantages that designers really love, On the back end, in the aftermarket/spare parts, it can potentially cut down on your lead time. I think a lot of the people who are listening to the podcast have probably had that experience—where you're waiting a year for a part sometimes, right? So with the additive manufacturing technologies that we have now, you can sometimes get that core metal part in a few days. So that kind of design flexibility and really tightening up your supply chain means that people are driven to pick up additive manufacturing technologies."

Shepard closed out the show with a forecast on the future of additive manufacturing technology: "I think we're going to see a lot of improvements in terms of the throughput of the processes and the economy of the processes. I'm really excited about the work that people are doing in metallurgy; there are these new computational methods you can use to discover new alloys, and you’ll see this more and more."

In this episode of the TurboTime podcast, Dr. Mike Shepard, VP of Aerospace and Defense at 3D Systems, talks about additive manufacturing. 

TurboTime Podcast: Additive Manufacturing with 3D Systems

Node 6 will produce hydrogen via electrolysis and peak-power generation with 100% hydrogen-capable turbines.

MHI Hydrogen Infrastructure Assists Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub with Funding, Technology

The heat-pump system uses Rhine water as its energy source and operates with a natural refrigerant in a closed-loop system.

RheinEnergie Commissions MAN Energy to Deliver Heat-Pump System for Cologne Plant

The P650 features a removable air-end design and horizontally split air-end components to allow for undisturbed inspection and maintenance.

FS-Elliott Unveils Oil-Free, Aerodynamic Centrifugal Compressor

The letter increases the planned data center’s capacity from 90 to 250 MW to support heightened electricity demand; New Era Helium will supply gas at a fixed price for five years.

New Era Helium, Sharon AI Sign Binding Letter to Develop Energy Data Center in Permian Basin

Advanced compressor technologies, AI and ML, and cooling technologies help reduce energy usage, carbon emissions, and at times, cost.

Cool-er Technology Supports Compressor Efficiency and Decarbonization

Turbo Tour of EthosEnergy’s facility in Houston, Performance Center Director Daniel Tegtmeier offered his insights into the growth and evolution of remote monitoring, its advantages and challenges, and how the company seeks to establish partnerships in all things turbine- and plant-related.

Daniel Tegtmeier of EthosEnergy shares how remote monitoring has grown over the past several years and the advantages and challenges of virtual capabilities. 

Remote Monitoring: Growth, Advantages, and Challenges

Q: How has remote monitoring grown and evolved over the past several years? What’s next?

What started as very manual processes has now evolved to mostly automatic and automatically generated monitoring activities. What used to take operators and engineers days to troubleshoot problems is now an automated process via advancements in technology.

Q: EthosEnergy now has full start/stop capability on natural gas-fired power plants. What advantage does this offer your customers?

It’s more than just start and stop in thermal plants; we can start and stop renewable assets as well. Some of the advantages of remote operation are efficiencies. You could streamline the staffing model for intermittent thermal assets. Secondly, our package includes remote monitoring and advanced analytics that’s applied to the remote operation of customer assets, ensuring that they stay competitive in today’s market.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge facing the power industry as it relates to remote operations?

The biggest challenge is the reluctance to shift operating modes from mostly on-site human presence—operating the plant as designed—to remote facilities that apply humans to asset monitoring.

Q: What are EthosEnergy’s five- to 10-year goals?

The five-year goal is growth. EthosEnergy aspires to be a partner in all things turbine- and plant-related, and it’s not just the power industry. Turbines are used in a host of operations like LNG and oil and gas—we seek to be the largest partner for all those industries in the realm of rotating equipment. We want to increase partnerships and our OEM presence.

Remote Monitoring: Growth, Advantages, and Challenges 

’s visit to EthosEnergy’s Houston-based light gas turbine workshop, Philip Booth, the Engineering Manager, shared his favorite part of day-to-day operations and offered insight into the available tools used in reverse engineering.

EthosEnergy’s Engineering Manager Philip Booth discusses available technology in reverse engineering for rotating equipment.

Reverse Engineering Adapts with Advanced Technologies

Q: What progress has been made over the last 10 - 20 years in available technology relating to engineering/reverse-engineering capability for rotating equipment?

The technology from OEMs has become increasingly complex, so reverse engineering must follow that complexity. Some of the available tools used to be computerized maintenance management systems (CMMs) where you get low-density data; we’re now using the most advanced blue-light scanning technology to capture the fit, form, and derive the function of parts.

We have a lot of technology available that is way beyond replicating a part. But we need to engineer solutions into that part so that we can make advancements to avoid early-life failure and bring that to bear so that our products are equal to anything from OEMs in the marketplace.

Q: What is your favorite part of day-to-day operations at your facility?

 It’s the range of subjects we cover. From an engineering point-of-view, the team can be looking at performance data in the morning; they can be working on a repair development program at lunch; we’re supporting the workshop in the afternoon; and we might be supporting a field-service technician across the world in the evening. I love being part of those conversations and being part of the problem-solving process.

Check out our video interview with EthosEnergy on 

Aftermarket, Repairs, and Overhaul Market.

Reverse Engineering Adapts with Advanced Technologies 

spoke with Dag Calafell, Advisory Committee Chair of Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia (TPS) and Asia TPS, about the latest trends in turbomachinery and efforts that he sees across the industry to decarbonize.

TURBO: What trends you’re seeing in turbomachinery?

What we're seeing now is that the traditional turbomachinery topics are still important, but we're looking more at how to integrate the turbomachinery optimization/reliability topics using AI, using machine learning, and how can we be part of a larger system where we're optimizing revenues, profitability, and supply chain logistics.

TURBO: What efforts are you seeing for decarbonization?

 A couple of presentations earlier today addressed decarbonization. One was on integrating gas turbines into bottoming cycles, and another one was a tutorial on using all the various technologies for carbon capture. It talked about how today we're using amines but what are we going to be doing in the future, such as exhaust gas recirculation? So, a lot of our program is indeed how do we minimize our emissions. One of our end users is working on using AI and machine learning algorithms to optimize their turbomachinery trains to run them at peak efficiency and therefore reduce emissions across the entire company.

At TPS 2024, Dag Calafell of TPS, shared turbomachinery trends and industry efforts toward decarbonization. 

Turbo, Decarbonization Trends at TPS 

Conference Coverage

Turbomachinery, Decarbonization Trends from TPS Chairman

 interviewed Concepts NREC about turbomachinery design software. 

David Pincince, ​Business Development & Marketing Manager, Advanced Turbo Products at Concepts NREC, shared common mistakes that are made when engineering gas turbine designs, mitigation strategies to overcome these errors, and key challenges the industry is trying to overcome in developing more effective turbomachinery design software.

At Turbo Expo 2023, Turbomachinery International interviewed Concepts NREC about common mistakes that are made when engineering gas turbine designs and challenges in creating turbomachinery design software.

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