Patent ID: 8500391

Claim:
A method for starting a supersonic gas compressor, comprising: (a) providing a compressor, said compressor comprising a casing, comprising a low pressure gas inlet for admitting a main flow of a gas to be compressed, and a high pressure gas exit for discharging a compressed flow of said gas, a rotor, comprising one or more aerodynamic ducts within said casing, said one or more aerodynamic ducts having converging inlet portions and diverging outlet portions, said one or more aerodynamic ducts comprising one or more structures that at supersonic inflow conditions generate a plurality of oblique shock waves (S 1 to S X ) in said gas within said converging inlet portion and a normal shock wave (S N ) in said gas as said gas enters or passes through said diverging outlet portion, said aerodynamic ducts having an inlet relative Mach number for operation associated with a design operating point selected within a design operating envelope for a selected gas composition, gas quantity, and gas compression ratio, a bypass passageway adapted to receive bypass gas from said aerodynamic ducts, said bypass gas passageway further comprising one or more bypass gas collectors, each co-located with one of said aerodynamic ducts and shaped and sized to facilitate removal of a selected quantity of bypass gas directly from said one or more aerodynamic ducts; (b) initiating rotation of said rotor and raising the rotating speed of said rotor to compress said gas at supersonic inlet conditions; (c) removing said selected quantity of bypass gas from said converging inlet portions of said one or more aerodynamic ducts through said bypass gas collectors and returning said bypass gas to said low pressure gas inlet; (d) stabilizing said oblique shock waves at a selected inlet relative Mach number and compression ratio; and (e) ending removal of said bypass gas.