- Gas and steam turbines are key contributors to India’s power sector
- These systems require use of superior lubrication solutions to reduce downtime and ensure continuous performance
- Solutions like the Mobil DTE™ 700 Geared Series lubricants and Mobil™ Solvancer® are proving to be gamechangers in helping power businesses operate under severe conditions
India is the third-largest producer and consumer of electricity worldwide, with an installed power capacity of 411.64 GW as of January 2023. The global gas turbine market size was valued at $18.9 Billion in 2021and gas turbine industry is projected to reach $22.5 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 3.6% from 2021 to 2026. [i]As this demand is only expected to grow, India’s power sector is witnessing a rapid transformation to help the country achieve its goal of ensuring electricity access while transitioning to a cleaner grid. Duly, power plants and their equipment are today playing a bigger role in ensuring round-the-clock electricity access across different parts of the country. As a country that continues to be heavily dependent on conventional fuels, the efficiency and performance of steam and gas turbines remains a prime concern.
Turbines require regular upkeep and maintenance to ensure that their performance is not compromised over time. Here, lubrication solutions designed specifically for turbines are playing a driving role in ensuring reduced downtime and continuous operations, leading to greater productivity and profitability. As a legacy lubricant provider, Mobil™ Lubricants has developed unique solutions that attend to demands of gas and steam turbines, ensuring improved capacities while attending to concerns of productivity.
Solutions to power turbines
Mobil’s industrial solutions for turbines have been designed to address specific challenges that turbines encounter in their operations across high temperatures, heavy load, and wet and dusty conditions. For instance, the Mobil DTE™ 700 Geared Series lubricants are designed to meet or exceed the requirements of steam and gas turbines’ circulation systems and gas compressors. The Mobil DTE 700 Geared Series lubricants come with assured high quality and reliability. They are specifically designed for use in gas, steam and combined cycle turbine as well as gas compressor applications operating under severe conditions. The formulations also include a non-zinc anti-wear system to meet the load carrying requirements of the most demanding geared turbines.
The Mobil DTE 700 Geared Series lubricants also provide excellent equipment protection, reliable operations, reduced downtime and extended oil change life. These lubricants ensure better varnish & deposit control, superior gear protection with higher FZG fail load stage of #12 along with expanded industry and EB claims. It meets or exceeds requirements of key gas and steam turbine and compressor builders. It also ensures excellent thermal oxidation stability, excellent anti-wear protection, excellent water separability, rapid air release and resistance to foaming.
Keeping systems clean
Along with geared lubricants, power plants are also in need of high-performance oil-soluble cleaners for gas or steam turbines, compressors and hydraulic systems to improve reliability and reduce overall cost of operation. Here, the Mobil™ Solvancer® has emerged a chosen cost-effective, oil-soluble cleaner that can be added to in-service oils to quickly dissolve varnish and organic deposits from within gas or steam turbines, compressors, and hydraulic systems – ultimately helping improve reliability and reduce overall cost of operations. Specifically, the product helps address issues such as escalating bearing temperatures and avoids issues such as re-adhesion, transfer of deposits, filter plugging, oil line flow blockage and more. Designed for operators in the power generation and petrochemical industries, Mobil Solvancer supports oil conversions, alleviates operational issues due to varnish, and helps with oil life extension. In addition to helping improve equipment reliability, it can help operators reach extended overhaul-to-overhaul goals and help reduce total cost of ownership. Mobil Solvancer is a customized oil soluble cleaner developed by Fluitec® using their proven DECON™ technology.
The oil-soluble cleaner is gentle on systems and compatible with lubricants and hydraulic oils formulated with API group I to IV base stocks with no adverse impact on in-service oil or additive performance. Mobil Solvancer also offers one of the industry’s lowest* treat rate — 3-5% compared to the average treat rate of 10-15% — and extended protection of more than one year, exceeding the performance of many competitive products.
As steam and gas turbines will be relevant in India’s energy mix, potentially accommodating newer forms of clean fuel like biofuels[i], the need to keep them efficient, productive and successful remains a prime goal. Duly, the choice of lubrication solution with a focus on improving turbine performance will be important markers for power businesses to drive themselves towards greater profitability while ensuring round-the-clock electricity for all.
*Actual results can vary depending upon the type of equipment used and its maintenance, operating conditions and environment, and any prior lubricant used.
For more information, please visit https://www.mobil.co.in/en-in/business/energy
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[1] https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/gas-turbines-market-94641697.html
[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2021/renewables