Maintenance & Reliability
Reliability: Monitor electric motor vibration and optimize motor bearing lubricant application
Follow our discourse with a reliability professional employed by an owner-operator with a number of ammonia and urea plants in locations where blinding sandstorms are prone to occur.
Reliability: Overcome biases and challenges facing industry
When asked about the challenges facing the hydrocarbon processing industry (HPI), our answer was swift and direct: The trials we face are bundled, or can be found, in lessons some of us learned decades ago. However, lessons learned and explained decades ago were often disregarded by managers with a short-range focus.
Innovations
Unintended fugitive emissions from pressurized plant components have long been a key concern for operators as well as regulators.
Improve refinery compressor performance with a reengineered rotor
When a scheduled maintenance task at a refinery in Germany revealed the need for a new rotor assembly, working with local independent specialists enabled the team responsible to improve the design and performance of the compressor without further interruption to service.
How small deviations and lack of management access compromise reliability
In 2013, Refinery “X” was experiencing serious pump distress—the third or fourth in a 12-month period. We received calls about the latest thrust bearing failure event on this important 3,560-rpm process pump. Soon after, a surprisingly similar incident happened at Refinery “Y” in 2015. Both incidents are considered here.
Take steps to achieve lubrication maintainability
Do not accept that what the OEM delivered, or how the equipment has been configured for the past 30 years, must be maintained into the future. Optimize yourPM program and look for maintainability improvements to ensure that the right work can be performed in the right way and at the right time.
Failure prevention—The ultimate asset management strategy
The primary cause for losses and lost opportunities at refineries, chemical complexes, pipeline networks and gas processing facilities is equipment failures.
Editorial Comment: Maintenance spending to jump in 2016 as refiners catch up with turnarounds
The number of scheduled refinery turnarounds in North America is anticipated to rise this year after declining sharply in 2015, as refiners delayed maintenance shutdowns to capitalize on abundant quantities of low-priced feedstock.
Reliability: Principles are more important than strategies
A number of US oil refineries have recently asked the question, “When should an equipment repair be classified as rework?”
Reliability: Transform ODR-OPPM into a worthwhile initiative
ODR, which stands for operator-driven reliability, has recently morphed into a new arrangement of letters: OPPM.
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