Asset Reliability Services and Training
 Asset Reliability Services and Training

Reliability Improvement and Maintenance Cost Reduction on Reciprocating Compressor

Situation:

Reciprocating Compressors form part of a Condensate Recovery Unit (CRU) in an oil production site. CRU downtime is a major contributor to flaring. The Compressor maintenance programme was based on the Manufacturer's Recommendations and entailed a regular "minor" planned shutdown for strip down and inspections. This resulted in flaring:

-   during the inspections
-   as a result of failures caused by the inspections (they were highly invasive and carried out in the field under time pressure)
What we did:
-   Carried out an RCM study on the CRU focussing particularly on the failure modes addressed by the existing maintenance programme. This study recommended a change to a programme of (non-invasive) condition- based tasks.
Results:
-   Eliminated 10 days per year of planned shutdown resulting in a reduction in flaring of more than 100,000 barrels/year of condensate across the fleet.
This project won a Chairman's Award for HSE Improvement
 
 

Maintenance Cost Reduction for International Gas Turbine OEM

Situation:

A major Gas Turbine Manufacturer's business model for industrial turbine packages has been changed by the move to Service Agreements. This means the OEM now pays for the cost of maintenance. 

What we did:
-   We used RCM principles to review and re-define the work programmes to ensure that each task was sensible, defensible and occurred at the appropriate interval.
-   Appropriate Instrument Maintenance intervals were determined. These were based on the technical characteristics and consequences of failure of each instrument (whereas previously all instruments were checked every year)
-   The analysis also examined possibilities to make design changes to facilitate better maintenance.
Results:

-   It was possible to de-tune some overly sensitive instrumentation to provide the end-user with alarms as opposed to trips.

-   Calibrations and loop test intervals on many instruments were able to be extended

-   56% reduction in maintenance labour costs for annual interventions

-   Availability improvements of at least 1.5 days per year per gas turbine from planned maintenance alone

-   A reduction in Control and Instrumentation Engineer resource requirement of around 60% 

 

Availability Improvement for Centrifugal Booster Compressor

Situation:

The client was facing government pressure to meet contractual obligations on gas supply for domestic use. RCM was used to develop a maintenance strategy for the critical items of process equipment to ensure obligations were met

 

What we did:
-   Carried out a System Diagnostic which identified process critical equipment as Booster Compressors
-   Reviewed maintenance and operational activities impacting compressor performance through an RCM analysis
-   Implemented actions to increase compressor uptime
 
Results:
Major improvements included:
-  Revised standard operating procedures
-  Improved incident response time
-  Updated maintenance schedule and spares strategy
 

By implementing these changes, the client was able to almost eliminate unscheduled compressor downtime (94% reduction)

 

This project won a Director's Award for Availability Improvement
 
 

Reliability Improvement and Maintenance Cost Reduction on Furnace Pump through better procedures and training

Situation:

A sintered carbon pump used to circulate aluminium at the bottom of the furnace used in an Aluminium Recycling plant. The pump was suffering from a low MTBF resulting in reduced output and high maintenance costs

 

What we did:
-   Carried out RCM study to review reasonably likely causes of pump failure
-   This was done using a team which included operations and maintenance personnel
.
Results:

All the major causes of failure were related to design, training, competence and procedures (ie none of the major solutions were cyclic maintenance recommendations). These included:

 

- Pumps damaged by operators during cleaning

- No assembly instructions for pumps

- No procedure for baking components (to eliminate moisture in the components) prior to assembly

- No oven temperature indicator

- No oven timer

- Brittle pump components damaged in transit

- Brittle pump components damaged in stores

 

Dealing with these issues resulted in Pump MTBF increasing by a factor of seven, with a similar reduction in corrective maintenance costs.

 

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