Sulzer Services expands offerings

Darayus Pardivala, President, Americas, Sulzer Services, discusses repair services, additive manufacturing, and reducing lead times.

WHAT MAINTENANCE AND REPAIR SERVICES DOES SULZER SERVICES OFFER?

We provide an extensive range of turbomachinery, pump, and electromechanical repair services to the power generation, chemical, refining, pipeline, and other process industries. With over 120 locations globally, our team of experienced engineers and technicians is dedicated to improving rotating equipment performance for steam and gas turbines, hot gas expanders, compressors, pumps, motors, generators, and more. We offer:

• Turnkey inspections, analyses, repairs, and overhauls

• Complete overhauls, retrofits, and duplicates

• Parts manufacturing, including additive manufacturing solutions

• Coating solutions

• Full range of field services

WHAT TURBINE AND COMPRESSOR COMPONENTS DO YOU OFFER?

Sulzer’s manufacturing department can reverse engineer and manufacture rotating and stationary flow path components for all kinds of steam turbines and compressors. This includes blades, nozzles, and diaphragms. We fabricate or cast case components and manufacture complete rotating assemblies such as disks, rotors, and shafts. We also manufacture hot section components for a number of gas turbines.

WHAT KIND OF CENTRIFUGAL COMPRESSOR SERVICES DO YOU SERVICE?

We service over 100 models of various compressors up to 30,000 HP. Additionally, we provide field service crews utilizing our team of experienced technical directors, diagnostics engineers, supervisors, and technicians for onsite solutions. Field service support includes, but is not limited to:

• Preventative maintenance and borescope inspections

• Major overhauls

• Unit removal and replacement

• Installation, alignment, and startup support

• Vibration diagnostics

• Field machining

WHAT TRENDS HAVE YOU OBSERVED IN THE INDUSTRY?

In oil & gas, we have seen increased bundled outages where companies contract Sulzer to perform major outage work onsite and send the equipment to our shops for expedited repairs. We have also seen a trend with our customers outsourcing more repair work while they focus on their core processes. In the power generation sector, we have observed longer runtimes due to advanced coatings and the extended life of parts. In addition, fossil fuel plants are running less due to the increased deployment of renewables.

HOW ABOUT NEW PRODUCTS OR SERVICES IN THE PIPELINE?

We introduced Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) as our newest weld overlay process. The advantage of this technology is that it utilizes a low heat input laser system to build up worn or damaged components historically repaired by coatings or tradi-tional welding processes. It also gives us the ability to repair more complex geometries. Recently, we expanded our aeroderivative service offering for gas generators, power turbines, and marine turbines, providing maintenance and overhauls with full in-house component repairs and performance testing. Additionally, we can supply exchange and lease engines on specific models.On the additive manufacturing front, we can print parts to significantly cut lead times, as well as reduce tooling investment costs. By printing parts like vane trailing edges, nozzle airfoils, expander segments, and pump components, we can opti-mize our repairs and replacements for quality and delivery.