(124f) Protecting Petrochemical Silent Alarms - Mechanical Gauges

Overview

Processing plants have seen sweeping technological changes in monitoring and automation equipment that have overshadowed the importance of mechanical gauges -- but these gauges still serve as alarm systems warning of safety risks and a slew of other measurements that can indicate unseen threats to productivity, uptime, and the integrity of expensive components.  Mechanical gauges measure system performance, not just pressure and temperature.  

Aggregating data from over 250 plant audits, WIKA Instrument Corporation found that at least 25% of pressure gauges at the average facility require immediate replacement.  An additional 40% are not in compliance with the requirements of the process they are monitoring.  Put into perspective, the average plant employee is located with 20 feet of almost 8 gauges that are in a state of failure or where failure is imminent.  

This puts employees and the processes they monitor in immediate danger daily.  Failing gauges can directly lead to media leaks, fires, and even explosions.  Productivity losses, casualties, environmental damage, and community disasters can originate from a single gauge that is not calibrated properly to the process it is monitoring.

This instrumentation crisis is accelerating at an astonishing rate due to a number of factors.  First, processing plants - particularly those in the petrochemical industry - are aging.  Many are more than 50 years old and despite their age, are being pushed to production limits they have never before seen.  With the rise of various fossil fuels from sources like shale, these plants are engaging in new complex processing tasks to accommodate the blending and refining needs of these materials.  

Second, the professional field of instrumentation engineering is seeing widespread brain drain.  Through decades of downsizing and retirements, instrument experts are exiting the industry and being replaced by new employees who lack specialized gauge knowledge and experience.  This is resulting in an increase in misapplied gauges and confusion surrounding best practices in gauge maintenance and replacement.

Case study

WIKA was recently contacted by a reliability engineer at a major chemical processing plant charged with improving safety and productivity at his facility.  His goal was to create accurate documentation of the indicated makes, models, and pressure ranges of all gauges in the plant.  All he had to go by was an outdated piping & instrumentation diagram (P&ID) and arbitrary pressure and gauge guidelines for a plant that was constructed before he was born.  Anybody who fully understood the specifications of proper gauges for each process had long since left the plant.  WIKA was also called on to standardize the plant’s inventory to achieve cost savings and simplify gauge replacement.

WIKA’s team of Full Audit Service Team (FAST) engineers found a fairly typical state of affairs at this facility:  no formal ownership of gauge management, no procedural guidelines for gauge maintenance, and a lack of knowledge on the specifics of the over 1,000 installed gauges.  The FAST team immediately went to work to correct these issues.

First, FAST engineers audited every one of the 1019 installed gauges in the plant to establish a comprehensive picture of the gauge population.  This was achieved in 8 days with visual inspection only, so no processes were disrupted during the audit.  With the collected information, common modes of gauge failure were identified and customized recommendations were made.  

The audit indicated that 14% of the plant’s gauges were in a state of failure with an additional 20% that were not in compliance with the processes they were monitoring -- results better than the industry average.  WIKA examined each failed and non-compliant gauge and identified the individual causes as general maintenance issues, overpressure, corrosion, pulsation, pressure spikes, vibration, mishandling & abuse, or temperature exposure.  

Next, the FAST team made best practices recommendations, indicating the types and numbers of gauges needed to correct issues that would lead to increased safety, reliability, and uptime.  P&IDs were updated to reflect new standards and WIKA’s recommendations.  The FAST team also documented each application and suggested corrective actions with easy to follow documentation including images, item descriptions, and specific part numbers.

WIKA also standardized inventory in the plant’s storeroom to eliminate confusion and achieve cost savings.  

RESULTS:  After the FAST team’s audit, the plant achieved 100% compliance with its own specifications.  SKUs in inventory were reduced by more than half and brought down to just 3 gauge models in 24 unique configurations that covered 92.5% of the plant.  This reduction typically results in expenditure savings of $100,000 - $175,000 per year because it reduces costs associated with ordering unneeded gauges, reduces failure rates by installing the proper gauges that require less frequent replacement, and achieves a lower cost of ownership by increasing reliability and reducing lifecycle costs.  The plant also received a digital document of its gauge population that can be easily updated and shared with maintenance and other departments, creating an easily accessible point of reference.  

Learning objectives

Seminar attendees will learn:

• Highest return on investment spends for preventing the biggest problems at the lowest expenditures

• Best practices for reducing fines and productivity lapses associated with environmental and safety violations

• Replacement part inventory control techniques that yield maximum savings and eliminate redundant SKUs

• Methodologies for replacing institutional knowledge lost by instrumentation engineers that have left the industry

• All the options that exist for bringing mechanical instrumentation up to code and ensuring that it stays there