Compressed Air System Upgrade

The scope of this project was to expand the plant compressed air system capacity by replacing an existing set of three compressors and their associated drying equipment with three new, higher capacity air compressors and driers in an existing operating plant. To limit downtime, all tie-ins needed to be installed and isolated ahead of time in a planned outage, then the installation was sequenced by isolating, replacing, and commissioning one compressor at a time, involving additional planning, piping, and valving. In addition to general arrangement of the system, LVTA was responsible for air piping between the compressors and driers, air piping from the driers to the plant tie-ins, cooling water piping to and from the plant tie-ins and between the equipment, condensate piping, locating and coordinating the necessary instrumentation and valves, piping supports, structural rain covers for external equipment, and foundation designs. Key challenges in this project include the following:

• Congested existing site
• Accommodating phased tie-ins to limit downtime of operating plant
• Understand and communicate when intermediate steps of demolition and installation can be accommodated