INTRODUCTION A refinery or chemical plant Fixed Equipment Mechanical Integrity (FEMI) program consists of eight basic categories or “Pillars” that are fundamental to achieve FEMI excellence. While every refinery or chemical plant has some form of these Pillars in place, they are often inadequately implemented or have significant gaps in the key elements that make […]
…by Eileen Chant and Abby King Fired heaters are critical equipment items in the process industries and are often overlooked since they don’t fit nicely into a single category of equipment or existing programs in the same way a pump or pressure vessel does. Safe and reliable operation is essential to avoiding adverse health, safety, […]
Are Your Wires Crossed? By Rick Hoffman and Joe Rammage We recently evaluated a 15kV, 5000 hp, induction motor in a WPII enclosure manufactured by a foreign company. During an on-site inspection of the main terminal box it was discovered that the high voltage leads were touching. This raised significant concerns about the long-term reliability […]
One of the major issues in designing large motor driven pump applications is minimizing the overhung weight on the pump rotor. Motor or gearbox drives are designed and sized independently of the driven unit. They are based on motor frame size and/or gearbox frame sizes and the drive component manufacturer has no information on the […]
Many companies and organizations have been on the reliability journey for a number of years, while others are just beginning. There are many elements of a solid reliability program – establishing a reliability centered culture, tracking key metrics, bad actor elimination programs and establishing equipment reliability plans – to name a few. But, one key […]
I personally went through Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Ike during my career living in the Gulf Coast. Restarting our plants after these storms was challenging, home life was miserable without power for three weeks and traveling over 100 miles north to find gasoline, food and water for family and neighbors was time consuming and hazardous. […]
Many of the tourist spots around the world have panhandlers. Some of the more creative ones stand on street corners advertising that they will tell you where you got your shoes, for a dollar. Of course it turns out that “you got your shoes” at the corner of Bourbon and St. Peters – or wherever […]
Traditional rotating equipment mounted at grade use the mass of a foundation and grout to reduce vibration and provide support and stiffness. However, cooling tower fans must be elevated many feet above a basin of water which sometimes puts them “out of sight and out of mind”. Cost and practicality prohibits concrete and grout, thus […]
Machinery and reliability people have for a long time observed that when it comes to long life and high reliability, operating at higher speeds compares poorly to operation at lower speeds. One of the primary reasons for having high-speed devices is economics. With high speed you can have smaller equipment sizes with fewer stages. While […]
Many years ago when I first started my career in a rotating equipment maintenance organization, I was spending the day with a senior metallurgist, which was part of my orientation process as a new technical employee. He was well known to not have the best “bedside manner” and it was clear he was not thrilled […]
