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Experimental investigation of the water-injected process-gas screw

compressor

Article  in  ARCHIVE Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part E Journal of Process Mechanical Engineering 1989-1996 (vols · August 2016
DOI: 10.1177/0954408916666573

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Original article

Proc IMechE Part E:

J Process Mechanical Engineering
Experimental investigation 0(0) 1–9
! IMechE 2016

of the water–injected process-gas Reprints and permissions:

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screw compressor DOI: 10.1177/0954408916666573

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Qichao Yang1, Changfeng Liu2, Quanming Zhang2,

Guangbin Liu1, Yuanyang Zhao1 and Liansheng Li1

Abstract
The test rig for water-injected process-gas screw compressor is designed and established. The dry gas seal technology
was adopted for the shaft seal of screw compressor and the test rig has the function of regulating and controlling the
mass flow of injected water. The performance characteristics of process-gas screw compressor under different working
conditions are investigated by experimental research. The effect of rotational speed, the injected water mass flow, and
the discharge pressure on the performance of screw compressor including discharge temperature and power consump-
tion were obtained. The experimental results show that the water injection could reduce the discharge temperature of
compressor significantly and increase the capacity of screw compressor at the same time. There exists an optimum mass
flow of injected water that could effectively reduce the discharge temperature and seal the clearance between the female
and male rotor simultaneously. For the tested screw compressor prototype, the proper injected water-to-air mass ratio
is about 2–3 L/m3. The additional power consumption caused by the injected water is small compared with the total shaft
power. The established compressor test rig and the experimental results are helpful for the development and improve-
ment on the performance of water-injected process-gas screw compressor.

Keywords
Process-gas screw compressor, water injection, characteristics, performance, experimental study

Date received: 21 February 2016; accepted: 5 August 2016

from refrigeration and air compressor to process-gas

Introduction
Screw compressor has the advantages of high reli-
ability, high efficiency, well-adapted, easy operation,
and low maintenance costs.1 It has been used for
process-gas application since the 1970s and now-
adays widely applied in chemical, petrochemical,
refining, gas processing industries, and general
industrial processes.2 Screw compressor is suitable
for the petrochemical process and can be used to
compress process-gas containing liquid or dust and
easy polymerization gas, etc. For example, process-
gas screw compressor has become the first choice in
a flare gas recovery system of petrochemical pro-
cesses. The great versatility of the process-gas
screw compressor increasingly leads more customers
within the process and hydrocarbon industry to
select this type of compressor.
Process-gas screw compressor is normally classified
into two main types, oil-injected and oil-free compres-
sor.3 The oil-free screw compressor was applied in pro-
cess gas application early. In the twentieth century,
oil-injected screw compressor expands its application
compressor.4 However, the presence of oil vapor in
the gas (even after the oil filtering system) is not
always allowable according to the conditions of the
technology employed. In recent years, with the devel-
opment of process scheme, the oil-free process-gas
screw compressor finds its application in a multitude
of different processes within numerous industrial
branches. For oil-free compressor, the compressed
process gas is completely free of oil and there is no
contamination.
Oil-free screw compressor was used in many
unique applications such as butadiene, styrene mono-
mer recycle gas, linear alkyl benzene, soda ash, etc.
Most of these applications are subject to dust and
1
State key Laboratory of Compressor Technology, Hefei General
Machinery Research Institute, Hefei, P.R.China
2
Shanghai Marine Diesel Engine Research Institute, Shanghai, P.R.China
Corresponding author:
Qichao Yang, State key Laboratory of Compressor Technology, Hefei
General Machinery Research Institute, Hefei 230031, P.R.China.
Email: qichaoyang@163.com

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2 Proc IMechE Part E: J Process Mechanical Engineering 0(0)
liquids that are likely to be present in the gas stream.
In many cases, water injection was used to control
the compression process.2 Water-injected screw com-
pressor has been used abroad. In China, such com-
pressors have not been widely applied. Liquid-injected
screw compressor is often advantageous than dry
machines. Water injection is an effective measure to
improve the performance of oil-free screw compres-
sor. The water injected into the chamber during com-
pression improves compression efficiency by cooling
the discharged air and fluidly sealing the clearances
deformed by the male rotor, female rotor and casing
to reduce the leakage of air. For the process-gas screw
compressor, the cooling liquid does not react with the
media. The liquid including water, lightweight oil, or
liquid hydrocarbon can be injected into the working
chamber to take away the heat and seal the clearance.
Therefore, certain gases are kept from polymerizing
or from operating in the explosion temperature
range. In addition, liquid-injected screw compressors
achieve considerably higher compression ratios than
dry machines.5 It is entirely feasible to have a single
liquid injected compressor stage give the kind of pres-
sure performance that would have mandated two or
more of the dry compression stages. Furthermore, the
excess liquid flushes the rotor and takes away the solid
particles and polymers. They can also be used in any
technological process that allows the presence of
water in the compression process. Several synthetic
rubber plants that recycle gases, e.g. ethylene oxide,
acetylene, coal gases, and, in very special cases, even
chlorine type gases, use liquid-injected rotary screw
compressor.
Many researchers have studied the water-injected
screw compressor and reciprocating compressor,
which are used for air compressor. Jianfeng et al. stu-
died the performance of water-injected screw compres-
sor used in PEM fuel cell system.6 Ous et al. examined
the water-injected twin-screw compressor in order to
develop effective humidification and cooling schemes
for fuel cell stacks as well as cooling for compressors.7
The temperature and relative humidity of the air
at suction and exhaust of the screw compressor were
monitored under constant pressure and water injec-
tion rate and at variable compressor operating
speeds. Almasi introduced the oil-flooded process-gas
screw compressor for coal steam gas applications. The
optimum arrangement for this compressor including
component design and manufacturing, journal and
thrust bearing seals, pulsation, noise and auxiliary sys-
tems is presented.8 For reciprocating air compressor,
the spraying water into cylinders makes its power con-
sumption and discharge temperature decrease, that can
save energy 8–15% and increase the pressure ratio.9
A novel kind of reciprocating air compressor is devel-
oped, in which quasi-isothermal compression is
achieved by the injection of a large quantity of water
through spray nozzles inside the compressor. The main
advantages of this type of compressor are that high
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pressure ratios (up to about 30) can be obtained in a
single stage with a significant reduction in power
consumption.10
The injection of water into compressor is now com-
monly used as a means of power augmentation for
industrial gas turbine. In this field, water injection-
based compressor has often been analyzed as a wet
compression system. A large numbers of studies were
conducted to better understand the effect of wet com-
pression in turbomachinery.11,12 White and Meacock13
investigated the impact of evaporative processes on
compressor operation performance. The use of wet
compression allows one to decrease the compressor spe-
cific work and discharge temperature and to increase
the compressor ratio and mass flow rate.14 These bene-
fits are influenced by various parameters such as the
evaporation rate and injected water mass flow rate.15
Many papers have been published on the optimum
design and calculation of both oil-injected and dry
screw compressors. However, most of these papers
describe computerize numerical solutions for refrigera-
tion screw compressor. Considering the lack of experi-
mental research on process-gas screw compressor, a
special experimental setup was designed and built up.
The preliminary tests were carried out under different
working conditions by varying rotational speed, pres-
sure ratio, and the amount of injected water. Based on
the experimental measurement, the main performance
of the screw compressor was obtained. The purpose of
this paper is to give the compressor user an understand-
ing of the operating characteristics of water-injected
screw compressor through experimental results.
Experimental facilities
System design
Figures 1 and 2 show the schematic diagram and
photograph of the experimental setup which consists
of the screw compressor, electric motor, oil lubrica-
tion subsystem, water injection system, dry-gas seal
system, and measure and data collection system. The
compressor operates between 2 and 5 bar of outlet
pressure, providing suction air flow of 10–20 m3/min.
The screw compressor is driven by a three-phase fre-
quency conversion motor. The motor operates with a
variable speed in the range 200–2970 r/min at a max-
imum rated power of 250 kW, which is controlled by
means of a frequency converter. Gearbox was coupled
with the motor to increase the speed of the compressor
rotor. The torque meter was installed between the gear-
box and the screw compressor. The gearbox output
shaft was connected by a gear coupling to the male
rotor shaft for the compressor drive. This arrangement
permitted male rotor shaft to 9000 r/min.
Because of restrictions applied by the test rig con-
figuration, the air was used instead of actual process
gas in this process-gas screw compressor test rig
to study the performance of screw compressor.
Yang et al.
Figure 1. Schematic of water-injected process-gas screw compressor test rig.
Figure 2. Photograph of process-gas screw compressor test rig.
The most important difference between air and actual
process gas is the molecular weight. Unlike the
centrifugal compressor, the screw compressor is a
positive displacement compressor. The screw com-
pressor is ideal for use in processes with fluctuating
molecular weights. There is only a small impact of
molecular weight of the gases upon the performance
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3
of screw compressor. The performance of actual
process-gas screw compressor could be evaluated
through numerical method based on the experimental
data. Therefore, the experimental results on screw air
compressor can provide reference for the improve-
ment of design and operation of process-gas screw
compressor.
4 Proc IMechE Part E: J Process Mechanical Engineering 0(0)
Upon leaving the gas filter, the compressed gas
enters the working chamber of the compressor,
where it is compressed to the final pressure along
with the injected water. The water absorbs the heat
liberated during compression and seals the gaps in the
flow path. After compression in the compressor, the
gas is separated from the water in the separator.
A pneumatic valve is installed at the discharge pipe
and is used to adjust the discharge pressure of com-
pressor. The power and rotary speed were measured
by the torque meter. The capacity of screw compres-
sor was measured by using the orifice plate. All of
the measurement instruments were calibrated before
conducting the experiments.
In order to ensure the reliable operation of com-
pressor, the oil lubrication subsystem is necessary to
lubricate the bearings installed at the compressor and
gearbox. In this subsystem, the oil was pumped from
the oil tank and then was cooled and filtered. The oil
flows into the lubrication parts of the screw compres-
sor and gearbox through the oil distributor. There are
five locations needed to be lubricated or cooled,
including the gearbox, the balance piston, the inlet
bearing, the outlet bearing, and the synchronizer
gear. Each of the oil piping pressure could be adjusted
independently and the pressure gauge was installed to
monitor the lubrication system.
The compressed air plant was used to provide the
clean and dry compressed air about 0.8 MPa to sub-
stitute the N2 of dry gas seal. The compressed air is
also used to drive the pneumatic proportional pres-
sure valve in the discharge pipe and the drain valve at
the bottom of the separator.
This water injection system consists of a storage
tank, air–water separation device, cooler, control
valves, and interconnecting piping. Liquid water was
injected into the inlet of screw compressor in the mod-
erate pressure region as shown in Figure 2 and will act
as lubricant, coolant, and sealant in the working
chamber of compressor. The water and gas mixture
is discharged through the compressor discharge
nozzle into a separation system located downstream
of the compressor. Water was separated in the separ-
ator and then discarded. The mass flow of water
injected to the screw compressor was adjusted by
the metal tube flow meter ranging from 0 to 7.2 t/h.
There are two rotors inside the casing of the screw
compressor. One rotor is referred to as male, and the
other rotor as the female. The screw air compressor
has rotors with an asymmetric profile and a 6/4 gear
ratio. The male rotor is driven by a directly coupled
electric motor and drives the female rotor. The male
rotor and the female rotor maintain a small clearance
and do not contact each other. To keep phase with
each other, a timing gear is mounted on the rotors to
prevent the inter rotor contact, thus ensuring that
clearance between the rotors is maintained during
operation. To isolate the rotor chamber from the
bearing with an oil atmosphere, seals are necessary
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Table 1. Operating conditions of the compressor test rig.
Item Value
Maximum rotaion speed (r/min) 9000
Capacity (m3/min) 20
Water flow rate (t/h) 7.2
Maximum discharge pressure (MPa) 3
Maximum rotor diameter (mm) 255
Maximum disacharge temperature ( C) 200
Motor power (kW) 250
next to the rotor lobe on each end of the machine.
There are journal bearings outside the seal area, which
are typically sleeve type hydrodynamic bearings.
Thrust bearings are located on the outer side of the
journal bearings, and tilting-pad type is typically used.
The main operating parameters of the test rig are
listed in Table 1.
Data acquisition and control system
Measurements of the air temperature and pressure
are carried out at different locations in the system.
The suction and discharge pressures were measured
using pressure transducers EJA 430 with an operating
0–8 bar range. The sensors have uncertainty of
0.075% of full range of the output (FRO). The
WZPK series thermal resistances are used to measure
the temperature at suction, discharge, and in front of
the orifice plate. It is also used to measure the bearing
temperature at the compressor and oil temperature at
different locations of the oil lubrication subsystem.
The measure range of the thermal resistances is
0–200 C with an accuracy of 0.15 C. A torque
meter transducer was employed to measure the com-
pressor driving torque and rotational speed. This cov-
ered a range of 0–9000 r/min with an uncertainty
of  0.1% FRO. The injected water mass flow rate
was measured by the metal tube rotary flow meter
with an uncertainty of  0.1 t/h of the reading. In
order to control the water mass flow precisely, two
metal tube rotary flow meters were installed and the
measure range is 0–1.2 t/h and 0–6 t/h, respectively.
The uncertainty of all transducers used in this
system meets the requirements of the National
Standard GB/T 15487-1995 (Methods of flow measure-
ment for displacement compressor) as listed in Table 2.
The instrument control and data acquisition
system was realized based on Programmable Logical
Controller (PLC). Figure 3 shows the interface of data
acquisition and control system developed for the com-
pressor test rig. All of the temperature and pressure in
the system were collected. The temperature of bearing
installed in the gearbox and the temperature of stator
winding of motor are also monitored to ensure the reli-
able operation of compressor. The frequency changer
is used in the test system to obtain variable speed
Yang et al. 5

performance of the water-injected screw compressor. The theoretical capacity is given by

The water mass flow rate can be adjusted by the con-
trolling valve and measured by the flow meter
installed on the injected water pipe.
Performance evaluation
Mass flow of the discharge gas from the compressor is
less than the theoretical value based on the gas leak-
age through clearances and gaps. Actual mass flow of
the discharge gas is measured by a flow meter at dif-
ferent working conditions. The theoretical mass flow
of the compressor is determined by the geometrical
parameters and the rotation speed of compressor.
The volumetric efficiency of the practical compressor
is defined as the ratio of actual capacity and theoret-
ical capacity of compressor, which reflect the quantity
of leakage loss during the compression process. It can
be calculated as the following equation.
V ¼ qV =qVt
where qV is the measured capacity and qVt is the the-
oretical capacity.
qVt ¼ C’ Cn1 nlD31 ð2Þ
where n is the speed of male rotor; Cn1 is the coeffi-
cient of used area and the value is 0.5009; C’ is the
coefficient of torsion angle and the value is 0.9907; l is
the length–diameter ratio and the value is 1.1; D1
is the outer diameter of male rotor and the value is
204 mm. Cn1 and C’ are related to the rotor profile
and have different values for various rotor profiles.
For the tested screw compressor, the values of Cn1
and C’ are dependent on the rotor profile used in
the screw compressor. In addition, the values of l
and D1 are determined by the geometric parameters
of the tested screw compressor rotor. Therefore, it can
be seen from above equation that the theoretical cap-
acity of the screw compressor is directly proportional
to the rotational speed.
The adiabatic efficiency is defined as the ratio of
ð1Þ adiabatic power consumption and the actual shaft
power. It is given by
ad ¼ Pad =P ð3Þ

where Pad is the adiabatic power consumption and P

Table 2. Transducers parameters used in the compressor test is the actual shaft power. The theoretical adiabatic
rig. power could be calculated as the following equation

GB15487-1995 " k1 #

Transducer Range Uncertainty requirement
k pd k
Pad ¼ ps qV 1 ð4Þ
k1 ps
Pressure 0–8 bar 0.075% 0.2%
Rotational speed 0–9000 r/min 0.1% 1%
Temperature 0–200 C 0.15 C 1 C where k is the isentropic exponent of air; ps is the inlet
pressure, pd is the discharge pressure, and qV is the
Water mass flow 0–7.2 t/h 0.1 t/h /
actual capacity.

Figure 3. The interface of data acquisition and control system.

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6 Proc IMechE Part E: J Process Mechanical Engineering 0(0)

Figure 4. Variation of volumetric efficiency wih rotational Figure 5. Variation of adiabatic efficiency with rotational
speed. speed.

Analysis of experimental results

The experimental measurements on screw compressor
under different working conditions including the vari-
ation of rotational speed, the mass flow of injected
water, and discharge pressure are carried out. The
setup of the experimental investigation and the proced-
ure followed was to examine the effect of water injec-
tion on compressor operation characteristics and
performance of compressor under variable conditions.

Effect of rotational speed

When the speed of the screw compressor is varied, its
performance varies. In order to investigate the influ-
ence of rotational speed on the volumetric efficiency
and adiabatic efficiency, the experiments were con-
ducted under different rotational speed. The discharge
pressure of the compressor was kept at 0.3 MPa
while varying the compressor speed from 2100 to
4200 r/min. The water mass flow during testing was
approximately 0.3 t/h. At each operating speed, the
temperature and pressure of the inlet and outlet air
of the compressor were measured. Figure 4 shows the
change of volume efficiency with the rotation speed.
It can be seen that the volume efficiency rises with the
increase of rotation speed. The capacity of screw com-
pressor is proportional to the rotational speed.
The larger the rotational speed, the larger the capacity
of screw compressor. Therefore, the volumetric effi-
ciency is rising due to the increasing of rational
speed at a constant leakage backflow. The volume
efficiency of screw compressor is about 58.1% at the
design speed of 3000 r/min. In order to ensure the
reliable operation of screw compressor under different
working conditions, the designed clearance is large.
Therefore, the tested volume efficiency of screw com-
pressor is rather low.
Figure 5 shows the change of adiabatic efficiency
of screw compressor with the rotational speed. The
adiabatic efficiency increases with the rising of
Figure 6. Effect of injected water on discharge temperature.
rotational speed. The efficiency of compressor is
about 48.2% at the rotation speed of 3000 r/min.
For the screw compressor with constant pressure
ratio, the power consumption for air compression is
proportional to the suction air mass flow. However,
the frictional power consumption due to the existence
of bearings and gears is not in direct proportion to
the air suction flow mass, and it increases with a
low speed. With the increase of rotation speed,
the proportion of mechanical loss in the total power
consumption decreases. Therefore, the adiabatic effi-
ciency has a tendency to increase with the increase of
rotational speed.
Effect of injected water
In the water injection experiments, the discharge pres-
sure of the screw compressor is constant and is set
to 0.3 MPa. Figure 6 shows the change of discharge
temperature of the compressor under various operat-
ing speeds and water injection mass flow. It can be
observed that discharge temperature values decrease
with the increase of injected water mass flow.

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Yang et al.
Figure 7. Effect of injected water on capacity.
The ratio of injected water and air volume flow is used
to indicate the mass flow of injected water for a given
screw compressor. The air volume flow of compressor
means the capacity of compressor. As can be seen, the
decrease in discharge temperature was greater at first.
For example, when the ratio of injected water and air
volume flow increases from 0.5 to 4 L/min3, the dis-
charge temperature of the screw compressor at 2400 r/
min decreases from 70.7 C to 28.9 C and reduces rap-
idly. There is no obvious decrease afterwards. The
discharge temperature is determined by the mass
flow and the injection temperature of water. The
injected water temperature was kept constant in the
experiments and the value is about 17 C. Increase in
the mass flow of water injection while the rotational
speed remains the same maximizes the cooling effect
of the injected water. As the water is injected into the
screw compressor chamber, it absorbs heat from the
wet air in the compressor. As the air is compressed,
the temperature of the air increases. Water injection
inhibits the increase of the gas temperature, and thus
the compression process is approximately isothermal,
which is the most highly efficient compression process.
It also can be seen that the change of discharge tem-
perature of the screw compressor under different rota-
tional speed has the same trend.
Figure 7 shows the effect of water injection mass
flow on the compressor capacity. It can be seen from
the figure that the water injection has a significant
impact on the capacity of screw compressor. With
the increase of injected water, the capacity of the com-
pressor rises quickly at the beginning. When the mass
flow of injected water is increased to a certain value,
the capacity of the compressor tends to be stable.
The tendency is similar under a different rotational
speed. The increase was attributed to the sealing
effect due to the liquid film formed between the clear-
ances of rotors. When the injected water mass flow
is low, the leakage from the clearance is larger. As
the injected water increases, the leakage will conse-
quently be reduced for larger water injection mass
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7
Figure 8. Effect of water injection on power consumption.
flow. For example, at the speed of 3000 r/min, the
capacity of compressor increases from 5.98 m3/min
to 8.23 m3/min and increased by 37.7% when the
injected water rises from 0.35 to 2.02 L/m3.
Figure 8 shows the effect of water injection mass
flow on the shaft power of the screw compressor at
different operating speed. It can be seen that the
amount of power increases slightly with the increase
of injected water. When water is injected into the
screw compressor, extra power is required to com-
press the water or water vapor, and the rise of the
water pressure with the increase of the wet air pressure
also needs power. The extra power caused by water
injection is small compared with the total shaft power.
For example, the shaft power of the screw compressor
at the operating speed of 3000 r/min increases from
47.53 kW to 49.24 kW and increases by 3.6% when
the mass flow of injected water increases from 0.5 to
6 t/h. The injected water has a better effect on the
improvement of capacity of screw compressor, as pre-
viously found in Figure 7. However, there exists vis-
cous loss due to the occurrence of large amount of
liquid water in the working chamber when the injec-
tion water mass flow is large. In general, the quasi-
isothermal compression could be achieved by the
injection of large quantity of water inside the com-
pressor. The spray of water inside the compressor in
order to achieve power and efficiency augmentation
has been proposed from early years of gas turbines.14
The gas temperature increases slightly during com-
pression for water-injected compressor. Therefore,
the power consumption could be reduced especially
at the working conditions with high pressure ratios.
However, the screw compressor tested in this study
has a low pressure ratio of 1.5, and the reduction of
power consumption due to the water injection is small
compared to the viscous loss due to the occurrence of
large amount of liquid water in the working chamber.
Therefore, the performance is relatively good when
the ratio of injected water to gas is about 2–3 L/m3.
According to the previous analysis, the discharge
8 Proc IMechE Part E: J Process Mechanical Engineering 0(0)

Figure 9. Effect of discharge pressure on power Figure 10. Effect of discharge pressure on discharge
consumption. temperature.

temperature is reduced to a lower level efficiently and

the compressor capacity is increased due to the avail-
able seal of liquid film at the same time. Furthermore,
the injected water has a small influence on shaft
power.

Effect of discharge pressure

The following variations of power consumption, dis-
charge temperature, and volume efficiency are all con-
sidered for the screw compressor running at a constant
speed of 3000 r/min and constant water injection mass
of 0.5 t/h. The discharge pressure is regulated by the
pneumatic control valve on the discharge pipeline.
Figure 9 demonstrates the effect discharge pressure on
power consumption of screw compressor with a con-
stant built-in volume ratio and suction pressure. It can
be seen that the power consumption of compressor
increase nearly linearly with discharge pressure. The ten-
dency is well consistent with the results in Wennemar.5
Figure 10 shows the discharge temperature versus
discharge pressure. It can be observed that the dis-
charge temperature also increases with the increase
of discharge pressure. For screw air compressor, the
discharge temperature is obtained from the following
equation
Td ¼ Ts ðPd =Ps Þðm1Þ=m
where Td is the discharge temperature, Ts is the suc-
tion temperature, Pd is the discharge pressure, Ps
is the suction pressure, and m is the polytropic expo-
nent of the compression. The polytropic exponent
of compression under water injection depends on
the extent of heat transfer occurring during the com-
pression process, i.e. on the mass flow rate of air,
mass flow of injected water, and pressure ratio. The
thermodynamic analysis by Zheng et al. presented the
calculation method of polytropic exponent of wet
compression and the results showed that the polytro-
pic index of actual wet compression is lower than the
Figure 11. Effect of discharge pressure on capacity.
dry air compression process.15 Besides, the polytropic
exponents of compression for different working media
can be determined by experimental data. For the tested
screw compressor, the polytropic exponent is assumed
to be between the isothermal and adiabatic exponents
to evaluate the discharge temperature of compressor.
From equation (5) it can be seen that the discharge
temperature will increase with the pressure ratio.
ð5Þ In fact, the discharge temperature depends on many
factors, including the gas density, and the temperature
difference between gas and the shell. The actual dis-
charge temperature is lower than the calculated results
from equation (5) due to the heat transfer between
compressed air and the compressor shell.
The effect of discharge pressure on the compressor
capacity is illustrated in Figure 11. Suction pressure,
rotational speed, and other properties are kept con-
stant. As can be seen, the compressor capacity drops
rapidly with the increase of discharge pressure.
The experimental results show agreement with those
of Wennemar.5 The compressor capacity decreases due
to the large leakage backflow at high pressure ratio.

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 Yang et al.
Conclusion
The test rig of water injection process screw compres-
sor is designed and established. The test rig adopts the
dry gas sealing technology and has the function of
inlet water injection. Preliminary tests on the oper-
ation characteristics of process-gas screw compressor
have proven that the test rig could measure the per-
formance of process gas screw compressor under vari-
ous working conditions. The injection of water in
screw compressor was experimentally investigated.
The experimental results show that the inlet water
injection could obviously decrease the discharge tem-
perature and there exist optimum water injection
mass. For the test machine, the optimum mass flow
of water injection is about 2–3 L/m3. The discharge
temperature is controlled to a lower level efficiently
and the compressor capacity is increased due to the
available seal of liquid film.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article: The authours would like to thank to the sup-
port by the National Natual Science Foundation of China
(grant no. 51406047) and Anhui Provincial Natural Science
Foundation (grant no. 1408085ME106).
References
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Appendix
Notation
Cn1 coefficient of used area
C’ coefficient of torsion angle
D1 outer diameter of male rotor (mm)
k isentropic exponent of air
m polytropic exponent
n speed (r/min)
p pressure (Pa)
P power (kW)
q capacity (m3/min)
T temperature ( C)
l length–diameter ratio of rotor
 efficiency
Subscripts
ad adiabatic
d discharge
s suction
V actual volume
Vt theoretical volume