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 […]
Compliance with the Process Safety Management rule, OSHA 1910.119, is a requirement for plants processing certain highly hazardous materials exceeding threshold quantities. The rule requires the owner to demonstrate all equipment has been purchased and installed in accordance with recognized industry standards. Maintenance practices must also be according to Recognized and Generally Accepted Good Engineering […]
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 […]
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: […]
The process team at Becht Engineering brings decades of experience from serving in the R&D of major corporations and also from representing a wide variety of Becht Engineering clients. We have observed and evaluated new technology from both sides of the fence…as employees or for large corporations who do R&D internally to outpace their competition, […]
In addition to the many clarifications, updated references to codes and standards, updates to basic allowable stresses, and added listed materials, there are several substantive changes to the 2016 Edition of ASME B31.3, Process Piping, which is scheduled to be issued on January 4, 2017. These changes are: Severe Cyclic Conditions The definition for severe […]
Changes in steelmaking practice are reported to be causing some carbon steel piping components that are assumed by ASME Codes to behave in a ductile manner at ambient temperatures, to behave instead in a brittle manner. Barry Messer from Fluor made a presentation on this subject at the Spring 2016 meeting of the ASME B31.3, […]
Design of a Nuclear Power Plant for a LOCA Nuclear power plants are designed with the capability to safely shut-down following a number of hypothetical accident scenarios. One of those accidents is the rupture of a pipe in the reactor coolant system (RCS). Such a rupture would result in a loss of coolant accident (LOCA), […]
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 […]
Gulf Coast Refinery Turnaround Becht Engineering mobilized Advisors to Louisiana to supplement a Client’s operations organization during a 45-day, fourth quarter 2015 turnaround. The planned outage included cleaning the pyro-fractionator coke fines, replacing the internals of a 5-stage gas compressor, cleaning, inspecting and making tie-ins for a flare recovery system, complete re-traying of an ethylene […]
