SECRET Project | Oil Free Screw Compressors | Howden

Howden, the Center for Compressor Technology at City University of London and the Royal Academy of Engineering are pleased to announce the SECRET Project...

SECRET stands for Smart Efficient Compression Reliability and Energy Targets. It is aimed to revolutionize the field of oil-free rotating positive displacement machines by understanding the physics of heat flow and solid interaction in leakage gaps of rotating machines and developing prototypes that could be commercialized later on in order to improve efficiency and reliability of these machines. Project SECRET is organized by Howden, the leading manufacturer of screw compressors and the Center for Compressor Technology at City University of London which I'm directing, and it is supported by Royal Academy of Engineering by establishing research chair in compression technologies. SECRET project is important to Howden as we're a company who prides itself at being the forefront of technology and innovation and have a long history based on the principle of taking great engineered products and making them better. This collaboration with City University and the Royal Academy of Engineering provides us with a great opportunity to combine that world-class academic research with our application and product expertise to create breakthrough advances in our core screw oil-free technology. Starting this project supported from Royal Academy of Engineering together with Howden gives us a great opportunity to move technology forward and to basically utilize this collaboration between academia and industry.

This project is not a standalone R&D initiative, my vision for this is that we are involved in this as a team from the very outset, so from sales and proposals through engineering, project management, and manufacturing. The reasons for this are clear; firstly i think we are ultimately focused on developing better and more competitive products and for this reason we need all of the experience and know-how across the various functions to contribute, secondly and also very importantly I see this is a huge opportunity to develop a collective understanding of the way we can learn from this collaboration ensure the skills and outcomes developed throughout this course of this five-year project are embedded into our organization for generations to come. Set up over five years in three big phases, so the first phase of the project is set up to explore the physics. To understand the physics and to utilize it in a second phase of the project to conceptualize means of improving efficiency and reliability of rotating positive displacement machines and in a third phase we are going to create working prototypes or commercial prototypes. About 20 percent of the energy generated in developed countries is used for compression, a small saving actually means quite a lot in terms of economy. Reliability is important because of maintenance costs for these processes that machines are used and it is important for companies to be able to monitor and service their machines. We are hoping that with this project we will be able to reduce leakage losses for about 20 percent to what they are today which in turn could improve their efficiency for up to two percent. So with project that we are doing we are hoping that obviously to improve energy efficiency, affect that energy sustainability but also to increase the share of oil-free machines from what today is about 13% to hopefully about 40% in 2050. This project will develop Howden's manufacturing capability. As there is no lubrication between rotors in an oil-free compressor it's always a challenge to manufacture at tight tolerances maintaining efficiencies whilst ensuring sufficient clearances to protect against rotor to rotor contact. With more advanced knowledge around the effect of heat transfer and the physics of flow and operation it'll allow us to provide better feedback to our operational teams with clear data and guidance to allow them to develop innovative manufacturing techniques in parallel to the SECRET project.