The turbo gear market is a challenging one and BHS high performance turbo gear and turbo parallel shaft gear units meet the uncompromising demands for superior quality and uncompromising reliability. “These factors play a vital role in achieving high plant availability and extended service performance,” says Voith South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Voith Divisional Manager – Energy, Oil & Gas, Derain Pillay. “Minimising costs and maximising production, priorities for maintaining competitive, are on every industry’s agenda in today’s environment of dwindling resources and souring costs,” continues Pillay. The uncompromising quality and unfailing reliability of the BHS gearbox range, backed by service excellence, have contributed to more than 80 years of global success in industries including mining, power generation, oil and gas, petrochemicals and chemical production. The BHS gearboxes have a large footprint on the African continent; from North Africa to Southern Africa where approximately 300 BHS gearboxes operate successfully in the mining and oil and gas industries. Voith South Africa (Pty) Ltd supplies and services the full range of BHS turbo gearboxes.

The BHS gearbox range includes parallel shaft gearboxes, epicyclic, power distribution and integral gearboxes as well as rotor turning gears and diaphragm couplings. Voith turbo parallel shaft gear units have the capacity to transmit very high powers and speeds with high efficiency and are most commonly used to reduce the turbine speed to generator speed for powers up to approximately 85MW or turbine speeds up to about 60.000 rpm. “The basis for this capacity is the ability of an optimised gear design in accordance with decades of experience and all current technical guidelines,” explains Pillay. These well-engineered, high-quality gear units are especially suited to high-speed applications and designed for continuous operation and have proven themselves in many diverse turbo-machinery and other applications.

Voith Turbo is one of the most experienced manufacturers of planetary or epicyclic gear units according to the Stoeckicht principle. With this design, the unsupported sun wheel plus the unsupported radially elastic annulus halves effect an equal load distribution on the planets and this in turn produces less wear and tear on the components for extended service life. Manufactured  up to powers of 45 MW, speeds of up to 80,000 rpm and torques of over 550 kNm, with single-stage designs ratios up to 12:1 and with two-stage ratios up to 80:1, Stoeckicht epicyclic gear units are used between all typical main engines and output machines within turbo trains.

The BHS integral gearboxes feature standard and flexible designs and accommodate various requirements for power and speed. The units have the versatility essential to meeting application requirements. These include vent compressors, energy recycling, chemical and natural gas industries, refrigeration, compressed air plants, gas liquefaction, process compressors and expansion turbines. Tailor-made to the relevant application and customer specification, integral gear units are designed and manufactured with up to 10 compressor stages, total unit weights of more than 40 tonnes, and gear pitch wheel diameters over 3 meters.“We recognise our customers’ unrelenting goals to improve performance and productivity while reducing energy consumption and costs and to achieve this, the quality and reliability offered by the BHS range are prerequisites,” points out Pillay and he continues, “Product quality and reliability are only as good as the supporting levels of service, maintenance and supply and availability of parts. “We offer the full end-to-end service package to ensure end users of maximum uptime and extended gearbox life”, concludes Pillay.