Gas compression technology of the 1950s and 1960s wasn’t known for being emissions conscious. That same technology, however, is still in service today across the United States, allowing methane to seep out at costly rates.
John Crane hopes to put an end to this practice with a retrofitted option that allows operators to retain their legacy centrifugal compressors with a modern touch. The company, known for its compressor components, has added the Aura 120NS dry gas seal to its existing lineup of similar technology. John Crane officially debuted this product at the Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia in September in Houston, Texas.
The Aura 120NS takes on a comparable composition of its Aura gas seal counterparts – silicon carbide rotating and stationary sealing faces – but has a smaller footprint. Against John Crane’s dry gas seal lineup, the Aura 120NS has a 42% reduced radial cross section and 22% reduced axial length, which allows it to fit in legacy compressors without requiring modifications to the equipment. Appropriately, the NS in the name stands for “narrow section.”
“There was a need for a seal which had a smaller footprint than our standard offering to … expand the availability of gas seal technology to a larger percentage of the equipment that’s out there today,” said Paul Hosking, John Crane’s global product manager. “It gives us the opportunity to reduce the methane emissions from the oil seal by about 95 percent.”
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This story first appeared in the November issue of COMPRESSORTECH2. We only publish a fraction of our magazine content online, so for more great content, get every issue in your inbox/mailbox and access to our digital archives with a free subscription.