Active Compressor Surge Control System by Using Piston Actuation: Implementation and Experimental Results*

A novel implementation and experimental test results of a piston actuated active surge control system (PAASCS) on a laboratory scale pipeline-compressor system are presented. The experimental test is done to prove the concept of stabilizing compressor surge by dissipating the plenum energy using a piston actuation. The PAASCS’s controller is applying φ-control introduced in (Uddin and Gravdahl, 2016), which only uses feedback from pressure measurements at the compressor discharge and in the plenum. Practical aspects of implementing the PAASCS are presented including: flow measurement, generating a compressor map based on a compressor performance test, piston design, and the test setup. The experimental test results show that the PAASCS is able to stabilize surge and prove the concept of PAASCS with the advantage of φ-control which stabilizes compressor surge by using feedback from pressure measurements only.