Maintenance & Reliability
Reliability: Consider stainless steel tubing for mechanical seal connections
If, in days past, you have questioned why hard piping was used for mechanical seal flush lines and seal support configurations in process pumps, you are certainly not alone.
Prevent buckling of tanks with external rafters
Most cone roof tanks are designed with roof-supporting structures inside the tank.
Keep a floating roof on an even keel
Users of large liquid hydrocarbon storage tanks at refineries and terminals must solve a variety of problems and make trade-offs related to vapor emissions and general structural integrity for these massive containers.
Preventing wire wooling journal bearing failure
This work details the operation of a 21,000-HP, five-stage barrel pump utilized for seawater injection service.
Improve welding technology for heavy-wall pressure vessels in creep-resistant steel
The standard practice recommended for high-pressure vessels with heavy wall thickness requires the implementation of weld joint preparation with a narrow gap technique. This generally calls for a two-beads-per-layer sequence, along with the use of the submerged arc welding (SAW) process.
Reliability: Include pump wear rings in your upgrade efforts
Most centrifugal pump designs include replaceable rotating wear rings on the impeller (impeller wear rings) and stationary wear rings inside the casing (case wear rings). Although pump wear rings are simple components, they can have profound impacts on pump reliability, efficiency and safety. These wear rings serve three purposes:
Editorial Comment: It’s all in the makeup of things
This issue of <i>Hydrocarbon Processing</i> features a topic that has been addressed in sections of the magazine for several decades, but has never been a focal point of the publication. That topic is materials manufacturing.
Use your data to its full potential to prevent outages
In a process plant, the safety system is responsible for the protection of personnel, resources and the environment, by taking the plant to a safe state in the event of a fault. However, is the system capable of contributing more to the plant’s uptime and profitability?
Evaluate structural stiffness for piping stress analysis
Hydrocarbon plants use a system of pipes of various sizes, pressures and temperatures. Sometimes these pipes have pulsating flows that result in piping system vibration. These piping systems must be designed for a high degree of reliability, which requires a comprehensive piping stress analysis for thermal, sustained, occasional and dynamic loading conditions.
Consider pitot tube pumps for low-flow, high-head applications
Low-flow, high-head pumping requirements in refining and petrochemical plants make up less than 2% of the total pump population. This minor percentage is creating significant reliability concerns, which result in low mean-time between failures (MTBF), as well as high maintenance costs.
- Valero Energy Q4 profit beats estimates; shares surge 1/30
- Russian oil refineries' peak maintenance expected in January and September 1/30
- U.S. lifts some Venezuela sanctions to ease oil sales 1/30
- Keppel, Aster plan sustainable aviation fuel project in Singapore 1/30
- Boeing, Israel's Technion to develop sustainable aviation fuel, as sector grapples with 2050 goal 1/30
- Baker Hughes, Giammarco Technologies to advance and commercialize hot potassium carbonate for post-combustion carbon capture 1/30
