This paper deals with the estimation of the energy production by means of pumps used as turbines to exploit residual hydraulic energy, as in the case of available head and flow rate in water distribution networks. To this aim, four pumps with different characteristics are investigated to estimate the producible yearly electric energy. The performance curves of Pumps As Turbines (PATs), which relate head, power, and efficiency to the volume flow rate over the entire PAT operation range, were derived by using published experimental data. The four considered water distribution networks, for which experimental data taken during one year were available, are characterized by significantly different hydraulic features (average flow rate in the range 10–116 L/s; average pressure reduction in the range 12–53 m). Therefore, energy production accounts for actual flow rate and head variability over the year. The conversion efficiency is also estimated, for both the whole water distribution network and the PAT alone.

This paper deals with the comparison of different methods which can be used for the prediction of the performance curves of pumps as turbines (PATs). The considered approaches are four, i.e., one physics-based simulation model (“white box” model), two “gray box” models, which integrate theory on turbomachines with specific data correlations, and one “black box” model. More in detail, the modeling approaches are: (1) a physics-based simulation model developed by the same authors, which includes the equations for estimating head, power, and efficiency and uses loss coefficients and specific parameters; (2) a model developed by Derakhshan and Nourbakhsh, which first predicts the best efficiency point of a PAT and then reconstructs their complete characteristic curves by means of two ad hoc equations; (3) the prediction model developed by Singh and Nestmann, which predicts the complete turbine characteristics based on pump shape and size; (4) an Evolutionary Polynomial Regression model, which represents a data-driven hybrid scheme which can be used for identifying the explicit mathematical relationship between PAT and pump curves. All approaches are applied to literature data, relying on both pump and PAT performance curves of head, power, and efficiency over the entire range of operation. The experimental data were provided by Derakhshan and Nourbakhsh for four different turbomachines, working in both pump and PAT mode with specific speed values in the range 1.53–5.82. This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the predictions made by means of the considered approaches and also analyzes consistency from a physical point of view. Advantages and drawbacks of each method are also analyzed and discussed.

A gas turbine trip is an unplanned shutdown, of which the most relevant consequences are business interruption and a reduction of equipment remaining useful life. Thus, understanding the underlying causes of gas turbine trip would allow predicting its occurrence in order to maximize gas turbine profitability and improve its availability. In the ever competitive Oil & Gas sector, data mining and machine learning are increasingly being employed to support a deeper insight and improved operation of gas turbines. Among the various machine learning tools, random forests are an ensemble learning method consisting of an aggregation of decision tree classifiers. This paper presents a novel methodology aimed at exploiting information embedded in the data and develops random forest models, aimed at predicting gas turbine trip based on information gathered during a timeframe of historical data acquired from multiple sensors. The novel approach exploits time series segmentation to increase the amount of training data, thus reducing overfitting. First, data are transformed according to a feature engineering methodology developed in a separate work by the same authors. Then, Random Forest models are trained and tested on unseen observations to demonstrate the benefits of the novel approach. The superiority of the novel approach is proved by considering two real-word case studies, involving field data taken during three years of operation of two fleets of gas turbines located in different regions. The novel methodology allows values of precision, recall and accuracy in the range 75–85%, thus demonstrating the industrial feasibility of the predictive methodology.

Sensor fault detection and classification is a key challenge for machine monitoring and diagnostics, since raw data cleaning represents a key process in the gas turbine industry. To this end, this paper presents a comprehensive approach for detection, classification, and integrated diagnostics of gas turbine sensors (named DCIDS), which was previously developed by the authors and has been substantially improved and validated by means of field data. For a single sensor or redundant/correlated sensors, the improved diagnostic tool, called improved-DCIDS (I-DCIDS), can identify seven classes of faults, i.e., out of range, stuck signal, dithering, standard deviation, trend coherence, spike, and bias. First, this paper details the I-DCIDS methodology for sensor fault detection and classification. The methodology uses basic mathematical laws that require some user-defined configuration parameters, i.e., acceptability thresholds and windows of observation. Second, a sensitivity analysis is carried out on I-DCIDS parameters to derive some rules of thumb about their optimal setting. The sensitivity analysis is performed on four heterogeneous and challenging datasets with redundant sensors acquired from Siemens gas turbines (GTs). The results demonstrate the diagnostic capability of the I-DCIDS approach in a real-world scenario. Moreover, the methodology proves to be suitable for all types of datasets and physical quantities and, thanks to its optimal tuning, can also identify the exact time point of fault onset.

Nowadays, gas turbines (GTs) are equipped with an increasing number of sensors, of which the acquired data are used for monitoring and diagnostic purposes. Therefore, anomaly detection in sensor time series is a crucial aspect for raw data cleaning, in order to identify accurate and reliable data. To this purpose, a novel methodology based on Bayesian hierarchical models (BHMs) is proposed in this paper. The final aim is the exploitation of information held by a pool of observations from redundant sensors as knowledge base to generate statistically consistent measurements according to input data. In this manner, it is possible to simulate a “virtual” healthy sensor, also known as digital twin, to be used for sensor fault identification. The capability of the novel methodology based on BHM is assessed by using field data with two types of implanted faults, i.e., spikes and bias faults. The analyses consider different numbers of faulty sensors within the pool and different fault magnitudes. In this manner, different levels of fault severity are investigated. The results demonstrate that the new approach is successful in most fault scenarios for both spike and bias faults and provide guidelines to tune the detection criterion based on the morphology of the available data.