Recently we got the invoice from Signet Monitoring and Analysis for the emission testing we had done in our field. In total we had 23 machines tested. OGC requires us to prove to them that our machines put out the emissions we are permitted for. We don’t need to do this to lean burn engines because they simply will not run, if the air fuel ratio is incorrect. At first it looks like we had to pay someone $102,641 to write up a document saying yes, we are compliant. But there is a lot more to it than that. Someone that analyzes a machine can give you educated advice to improve machinery performance and reliability. In my opinion this is what we paid for, plus we get credible documentation to submit to OGC backing up our claims. Last year Signet was out, we got everything in compliance, it was taxing, and to say the least, we found out we had room for improvement. It’s unfortunate that when there’s a problem, technicians tend to treat the symptom, instead of finding the problem and fixing it. To be honest I bet only 50% of compressor technicians know how to properly set up a rich burn engine. The way an engine runs is reliant on many variables, if they aren’t all in place the way they need to be, performance is affected. Waukesha’s ESM is 25-year-old technology and has less computing power than a rotary style phone. If an engine is going down on knock, it can be almost anything, from wiring, temperatures, fuel, load, timing etc. We found out that all these issues were contributing factors in our field. But it’s hard to fix a problem when the ESM kills the engine while you’re trying to troubleshoot its issues. That’s where our machinery analysts come in. I asked Signet to come out in March and walk through a bunch of our machines with myself and start brainstorming.

In June they came back, and we had made a lot of progress. With their equipment we could monitor the machine and find out what the problems were. While we were monitoring the machine physically, and with Signet’s equipment, we decided it was safe to bypass the knock shut downs, and start fixing some of our issues. Every machine had different issues, and they were easier to find with the help of some experts. We found 4 machines that had intake restrictions, repaired. We found wiring issues with knock sensors and exhaust temp sensors, repaired. We found issues with exhaust restrictions, repaired. Issues with intake air temps, repaired. That’s how we got our machines performing like they are now. We were able to increase our ignition timing by 30%, this dropped our overall temps significantly and increased horsepower. We were also able to decrease our fuel consumption on the 23 machines by 20% on average. That’s about 46e3m3/day. If my calculations are right, this invoice will have already paid for itself in fuel gas. The emission crew was sent out with local technicians, with the expectation that the techs would learn something about troubleshooting and repair. After talking to them, and reading their running check reports, I can confidently say everyone has learned a bit. We were able to get all our testing done this year with little to no effect on production, another big win. Maintaining our catalytic elements and air fuel ratio control from here should be easy, we have lots of spare elements, and all our systems are working much better now. Thank you, Signet, I’ve learned a lot. I look at emission testing a lot differently now than I did two years ago.