Automation of regenerative compressor cooling system using microcontroller

Abstract

Since there is a need for enhanced efficiency system in power generation, regenerative compressor cooling has become a savior for the existing limited resources. The compressed air, commonly called industry's fourth utility, that is condensed and contained at a pressure greater than the atmosphere. Cooling the air before admitting to the compressor is an important task because it affects the efficiency and quality of the compressed air. In this paper, an embedded based system with remote monitoring (i.e.) an alternate control system with latest state of the art technology is employed to automate the entire cooling process of air before admitting to the compressor. The traditional motorized cam timer is used for the sequence of operation continues to rotate regardless, which is not suitable when needing to wait for events that occur at variable times and also does not have the greater degree of flexibility that CPUbased controllers provide. In the traditional system, the sequence of operation with time response is carried out with synchronous motor based cam timer. This is replaced with real time clock which is one of the major focuses in this proposed paper. In order to change the path of airflow in cooling system, the four way valve is employed along with cam timer for improving the quality of input air to the compressor. The sequence of operations of the heat exchanger will be monitored from the PC based mimic (like DCS) panel (virtual control panel). This work focuses on no manual interruption, time flexibility, power saving as it does not use synchronous motor and also the entire process can be monitored from DCS control room.