Asset Integrity & Reliability Services

BoilerRock is an independent consulting group that specializes in reliability and mechanical integrity improvements services to clients in the oil and gas industry.

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Corrosion- Do you know where to look?

Posted by on in Asset Integrity, Condition Monitoring, Corrosion, Inspection, Maintenance, Process Safety Management, Reliability, Risk Based Inspection- RBI, UncategorizedLeave a comment

When I travel to different sites reviewing mechanical integrity and inspection programs, the facilities normally have some type of corrosion monitoring program. These programs vary widely from mature programs that have been in place for years and my include a risk-based inspection (RBI) approach and several special emphasis projects as well, or the program may only do inspections and corrosion monitoring because OSHA requires them to have a program. Most of the organizations are somewhere in the middle and do their best to find issues before they potentially become major incidents, but the problem with many types of corrosion is that it’s difficult to find. So how can we improve our odds of finding the corrosion?

A corrosion review of your facility will help you understand what types of damages mechanisms/types of corrosion you have in each part of your plant. It will help your team understand what type of corrosion that they are looking for and the most likely places that type of corrosion will occur. Additionally, with the right team you will also know the best inspection techniques to use to find the corrosion. Without a corrosion study, you may have thousands of corrosion monitoring locations that your organization is managing but are they doing you any good? If you have a damage mechanism that is a localized corrosion mechanism and you are simply doing spot ultrasonic testing (UT) on that equipment, your likelihood of finding the corrosion prior to a leak is extremely low. Spot UT will help you understand your general corrosion that might be occurring, but if you have a localized or cracking corrosion mechanism you are wasting your time and money. The corrosion review will make you smarter on Where and How to look for the potential corrosion issues and improve your corrosion monitoring program immensely.

How do I complete a corrosion review for my plant? The American Petroleum Institute (API) has published a document API-970 that will give you an excellent road map to completing a corrosion study and developing corrosion control documents for your organization. The main requirement for completing a good corrosion review is to have the proper cross-functional team available to complete the study. Key team members must include:

• Corrosion Engineer familiar with the process. This will likely be an outside contractor as most companies have limited corrosion specialist and if they do, they are normally extremely busy.
• Process Engineer familiar with the facility being reviewed.
• Inspection
• Operations
• Maintenance
• Engineering

The management of a corrosion monitoring program can be very challenging simply due to the large volume of data that being generated and can be difficult to ‘see the forest through the trees’ sometimes. With a better understanding of the corrosion types likely to occur in your plant, your ability to focus your efforts in the right places will be very beneficial.

Actions to Take:
1) Has our plant completed a corrosion study?
YES,
a. Find the study and review it personally and with your team.
b. Have the recommendations from the study been implemented into your plant’s corrosion monitoring program?
NO,
c. Obtain an estimate for completing a corrosion study and weigh the benefits, risks and value to your plant.
d. Ask the question- Do we know where to look for corrosion in our plant?

API Standards- Risk-based Inspection (API-580) Overview

Posted by on in Asset Integrity, Inspection, Process Safety Management, Reliability, Risk Based Inspection- RBI, UncategorizedLeave a comment

In my last blog I discussed the wealth of information available in the American Petroleum Institute (API) Standards/Recommended Practices. Today, I’m going to give a brief review of the Risk-based Inspection (RBI) API-580. With the everyday workload for most people in industry it is difficult to set aside much time for reading a standard or recommended practice even if it’s important to your job. I will give you the highlights of the standard and enable you determine if you would benefit for additional reading of the document.

The RBI document provides guidance on developing of an RBI program for fixed equipment and piping in a refinery, chemical, or related hydrocarbon processing facilities. If your facility is already using an RBI program as a tool for determine inspection plans and timing of inspection you are likely familiar with the basics. The basic of RBI is that you determine the Probability of Failure (POF) and Consequence of Failure (COF), which in turn give you an overall risk. The overall risk will allow you focus your inspection resources and funds to the equipment with the highest overall risk. If your new to the industry or have never used RBI, the first few sections of 580 gives an excellent overview of Risk-based Inspection. There are several different risk matrixes used throughout the industry, but they all follow the same basic logic of increasing risk as POF and COF increases. See the attached blog picture being an example of a risk matrix.

The major benefit of reviewing the API-580 document in detail is the step by step approach used to assisting in developing a good program and some of the limitations and pitfalls when implementing a RBI program. The document includes a number of common pitfalls (Section 17) when implementing a program which include issues with Planning, Data and Information Collection, Damage Mechanism/Failure Modes, Accessing POF/COF, Risk Determination and Management, and Risk Management with Inspection Activities.

If you follow the document’s directions and guidance it will walk you through the various steps of developing an RBI program. A few of those steps are outlined in detail in the following sections of the 580 document:

Section 6: Planning the RBI Assessment
Section 7: Data and Information Collection
Section 8: Damage Mechanisms and Failure Modes
Section 9: Access POF
Section 10: Assessing COF
Section 11: Risk Determination, Assessment, and Management
Section 12: Risk Management with Inspection Activities
Section 14: Reassessment and Updating RBI Assessments

If you have an existing RBI program that is not meeting your expectations, a review of the pitfalls and reassessment sections could be very beneficial for you and your facility. Additionally, there are training sessions as well as an API certification program available for API-580 if you have a need/desire to fully understand the Risk-based Inspection methodology and requirements.

Actions to Take:
1) Does our plant have an RBI program? Is the RBI program meeting the expectations of you and your facility?
2) Consider that you or one of your employees present an overview of the API-580 document or review a section of the document during a weekly meeting.
3) Are the API standards available to you? If not, discuss with your supervisor.
4) Consider attending an API event or training.

 

API Standards- What can I Learn?

Posted by on in Asset Integrity, Inspection, Process Safety Management, Reliability, Rotating Equipment, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I attended an American Petroleum Institute (API) Equipment Standards meeting recently and was impressed with the number of years of experience and knowledge in the room as different issues were being discussed.  This thought also occurred to me–“How many people are really using this wealth of information?” With the everyday workload for most people in industry it is difficult to set aside much time for reading a standard or recommended practice even if its important to your job. However, if you consider the knowledge and potential learning available to you and your team in these documents its worth taking note; particularly if your new to industry.

Several API documents were written in response to a major industry incidents and were put in place to prevent similar incidents– IF followed. However, if we don’t know what is in the document then how do we learn from our mistakes. Unfortunately, that continues to be a common theme in the oil and gas industry that we don’t do a good job of learning from each other’s mistakes. I think this is vitally important as many highly experienced employees reach retirement age and turn over the reigns to the younger less experienced employees.

If you look at most of the smaller companies that don’t have the inhouse subject matter experts available to them, the knowledge related to any topic must be learn the hard way through mistakes. However, a much better and more proactive approach is to learn via training or self-teaching. The following list is a small sample of API documents/subjects available on Fixed Equipment and Rotating Equipment. The overall list of API documents available for learning in a vast range of industry topics is much larger.

  • API 510 – Pressure Vessel Inspection Code
  • API 570 – Piping Inspection Code
  • API RP 571 – Damage Mechanisms Affecting Fixed Equipment
  • API RP 572 – Inspection of Pressure Vessels
  • API RP 573 – Inspection of Fired Boilers and Heaters
  • API RP 574 – Inspection Practices for Piping System Components
  • API RP 575 – Inspection of Atmospheric and Low-Pressure Storage Tanks
  • API RP 576 – Inspection of Pressure Relieving Devices
  • API RP 577 – Welding Inspection and Metallurgy
  • API RP 578 – Material Verification Program for New and Existing Alloy Piping
  • API RP 579-1 – Recommended Practice for Fitness-For-Service
  • API RP 580 – Risk-Based Inspection
  • API RP 582 – Supplementary Welding Guidelines
  • API Std 653 – Standard for Tank Inspection, Repair, Alteration, and Reconstruction
  • API Std 610 – Centrifugal Pumps
  • API Std 611 – General Purpose Steam Turbines
  • API Std 613 – Special Purpose Gear Units for Petroleum, Chemical and Gas Industry
  • API Std 614 – Lubrication, Shaft-sealing, and Control-oil Systems and Auxiliaries
  • API Std 616 – Gas Turbines for the Petroleum, Chemical and Gas Industry Services
  • API Std 617 – Axial and Centrifugal Compressors and Expander-compressors
  • API Std 618 – Reciprocating Compressors for Petroleum, Chemical, and Gas Industry
  • API Std 619 – Rotary-type Positive Displacement Compressors
  • API Std 673 – Centrifugal Fans for Petroleum, Chemical, and Gas Industry Services
  • API Std 674 – Positive Displacement Pumps-Reciprocating
  • API Std 675 – Positive Displacement Pumps-Controlled Volume
  • API Std 676 – Positive Displacement Pumps-Rotary
  • API Std 677 – General-purpose Gear Units for Petroleum, Chemical and Gas Industry
  • API Std 681 – Liquid Ring Vacuum Pumps and Compressors
  • API Std 682 – Pumps-Shaft Sealing Systems for Centrifugal and Rotary Pumps
  • API RP 687 – Recommended Practice for Rotor Repair

If you have a problem or a topic that you’re in need of additional information, there is likely an API document available related to the subject. Although difficult from a time management perspective, we must take the time for learning for ourselves and our employees.

Actions to Take:
1)  Complete a quick review the API documents above and identify where additional knowledge might be warranted.
2)  Do you have access to the API standard? If not, discuss with your supervisor.
3)  Consider that you or one of your employees present an overview of an API document or small section of a document for their area during a weekly meeting. The employee and those present will all learn from this type of exercise.
4)  Consider attending an API event.

What do I need to know about Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI)?

Posted by on in Asset Integrity, UncategorizedLeave a comment

As I mentioned in my first blog post, these blog posts will be short and to the point with the intent of providing useful information to remember without using much of your valuable time. The first corrosion issue we will be discussing is Corrosion Under Insulation (commonly referred to as CUI). So you have a system that has very little corrosion potential and then you get the call that you have a leak- what happened..? Being an external corrosion mechanism, CUI can get you regardless of the any other corrosion issues. CUI is a very damaging corrosion mechanism caused by moisture under insulation or fireproofing.

The following are few important CUI facts that you should understand:

  1. Corrosion (pitting & localized loss + cracking in stainless steel) is possible at the following temperatures for carbon and stainless steels:

Carbon and low alloy Steels: 10°F (–12°C) and 350°F (175°C)
Austenitic and duplex Stainless Steels: 140ºF (60°C) and 400ºF (205°C)

2. Corrosion rates increase with increasing metal temperature.
3. Cyclic systems with varying process temperatures or intermittent service can increase corrosion.
4. Insulating materials that hold moisture or wick can increase corrosion.
5. Airborne contaminants can accelerate corrosion.

a. Chlorides from cooling tower drift or marine environments
b. SO2 from nearby stack emissions
c. Salt water environments on Offshore platforms

What should I do/Actions to Consider?

     i. Verify that your current CUI program is considering the proper temperature ranges for carbon and stainless steels in your plant.

     ii. Do you have any Cyclic Systems in your plant?  Verify with your process conditions with your process specialist to insure your covering all operating conditions for your equipment.

     iii. Verify that your CUI program is taking into account other factors that cannot be identified from the office.  Do you have insulated systems near cooling towers, stacks or vents? Do you have steam tracing leaks? Do you have damaged insulation?

All comments and questions are appreciated!

Introducing- The BoilerRock Blog

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My name is Todd Brewster, Managing Director and Co-Founder of BoilerRock LLC. After 30 years in the Oil & Gas industry of Corporate America, we decided to startup BoilerRock LLC not only to get away from the day to day headaches/stress of the Corporate World, but because we wanted to find a way to give back/share with others in the industry the lessons learned and mistakes we have seen throughout our careers. With my 30 years of previous experience in the Oil & Gas industry I’ve seen many failures, fires and explosions that have impacted me personally. My vision is to take those years of personal experience and those of my BoilerRock team and share some of that knowledge with others in the industry. If any of that knowledge is helpful to others and prevents one accident in your plant then I feel this blog has been a huge success. I also know from my many years in the Corporate world that your time is extremely valuable and reading a 4 page article on any subject can be very difficult due to all the other work bidding for your time. Therefore, these blog posts will be short, to the point and focused on the meat of a topic.

This blog will be used to discuss mainly Asset Integrity and Reliability issues and information, with some additional Turnaround related topic along the way. As I’ve searched the internet I have not found many sites that are dedicated to these types of discussions. As Maintenance, Reliability, Inspection and TAR Managers your time is extremely valuable and I hope to provide useful information and topics that will further your understanding of MI and other industry related issues in a short and concise manner. Additionally, this platform will allow for discussion on the information presented as well as any industry issues that our audience would like to discuss.

Check back for more updates and the next blog topic of CUI….!