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4-6 Air and Gas Drilling Manual
centrifugal compressors can operate with volumetric flow rates up to approximately
4
10 actual cfm and with overall multistage compression ratios up to about 20.
Figure 4-4: Single-stage centrifugal compressor [2].
Figure 4-5: Multistage centrifugal compressor with intercooler [2].
Centrifugal compressors are usually used in large processing plants and in some
pipeline applications. They can be operated with some small percentage of liquid in
the gas flow.
These machines are used principally to compress large volumetric flow rates to
rather modest pressures. Thus, their use is more applicable to the petroleum refining
and chemical processing industries.
More details regarding the centrifugal compressor can be found in other
references [2, 7, 8, 9].
4.3.2 Axial-Flow Compressors
Axial-flow compressors are very high-speed, large volumetric flow rate
machines. This type of compressor flows gas into the intake ports and propels the
