Potential Operating Strategies & Considerations – An SME Opinion

Current market conditions are forcing many refiners into an unfamiliar operating state.  A different approach may be required to rebalance and reduce refinery intake and maximize products that are still in demand.  Unit and equipment specific impacts of this approach will depend on the severity of the rate reduction as well as the duration. As […]

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Piping Settlement Screening Tool

Settlement of a pipe support foundation is usually not a big deal to assess. A local piping flexibility model will reveal if the settled support keeps the pipe bending stresses within the allowable codes and, if the bending stresses are unacceptable, modifying the support and monitor periodically for further settlement is normally a quite manageable […]

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Storage Tanks – Maintenance & Reliability of Floating Roofs

The safe operation, maintenance and reliability of roofs in large tanks, does require special considerations in their design, construction and installation practices. Over the past 60 plus years, thousands of tanks with Fixed Roofs with internal Covers, and Floating Roofs, have been used to store Crude Oil and Middle Distillates. Refiners derived significant advantage through […]

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Risk Based Work Selection (RBWS) – An Essential Step for Turnaround Work Scope Optimization in Refining Units

Turnarounds (TA) in refining units are executed periodically, on a planned basis, to meet multiple objectives, such as regulatory compliance, process reliability improvement, and equipment inspection and/or repairs. In a competitive business environment, managing TA events in a cost effective manner is a well-recognized challenge. Key Step – Planning Development of a comprehensive Work Scope for […]

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Your pump’s Mean Time Between Repairs (MTBR) is what?…Or what should it be…

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 […]

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Dimensional Control – Post Fabrication Pipe Spool QC Surveys

With the advancements in dimensional technology, obtaining accurate measurements at the worksite has become common practice for most owners and engineering companies. New and replacement piping is being designed from behind desks without the designer visiting the worksite. This means there is no need for string lines, tape measures, or auto levels to obtain measurements […]

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Equipment Nozzle Loads

by Greg Hollinger and George Antaki One of the qualification requirements for a piping system is to keep the loads imparted by the piping on equipment nozzles within certain allowable limits. These loads consist of sets of three forces and three moments, for the various load combinations. There are basically two types of nozzle load limits: […]

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Resolution of Chronic Cooling Tower Fan Vibrations

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 […]

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“Speed Kills” – An Empirical Association of Antifriction Bearing Behavior When Things Go From Bad to Worse

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 […]

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PSM Implementation is a Challenge — Maintaining Compliance is Even Harder

The Process Safety Management rule (PSM), OSHA 1910.119, was implemented in the early 90’s, more than 20 years ago. Implementation was driven by a number of tragic accidents in the process industry. However, despite the long history of the rule and multiple preventable, catastrophic incidents, many companies still have not fully implemented PSM. Companies that […]

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