Development and Research on a Hermetic Horizontal Oil-injected Scroll Compressor for Recovering Casing Gas

Increasing attention has been focused on capturing solution gas vented or flared from oil wells to reduce the emission of the greenhouse gases and effectively utilize the natural energy. With the aim of recovering the gas for its economic value, this paper presents a hermetic horizontal oil-injected scroll compressor to meet the unique demands of this application which the traditional compression technology has not been able to meet. A hermetic horizontal oil-injected scroll compressor was developed, in which the special internal oil system was designed. An experimental system was designed and set up to investigate the performance of the scroll compressor. With the experimental results, the effect of the discharge pressure and oil injection flow rate on performance of the compressor was analyzed and applied to provide the basis for developing reliable and flexible hermetic horizontal oil injected scroll compressor in taking use of the oil wells casing gas.