Advanced NDT Solutions for Tube Inspection
INTRODUCTION The heat exchanger is a critical equipment in process manufacturing. Maintaining and cleaning them makes a great difference in thermal and mechanical performance and energy efficiency. Well-maintained and clean heat exchangers result in enormous energy savings. Workflow of tube bundle maintenance THE PROBLEM Figure 1 shows the workflow of tube bundle maintenance. After completion […]
OVERVIEW Furnaces play a vital role in the process and reliability of any refinery or petrochemical plant. Periodic maintenance in terms of inspection shall be a part of asset integrity management to ensure the safety and economics of processing plants. Operating conditions, type of process or service, the material of construction, and several other factors […]
OVERVIEW The efficiency of the distillation process in a petrochemical plant is mainly dependent on the condition of the Column Reboiler. Similarly, Depropanizer Reboiler and Stabiliser Reboiler are the key equipment for gas processing plants. The root cause of failure in such Reboiler Tubes is primarily due to corrosion on the interior side of the […]
OVERVIEW Condensate Stabilisers are primarily used to recover some portions of the liquid in processing plants. A paper & pulp plant in Mexico faced a problem with such a Condensate Stabilizer. After just a few months of operation, there was a scheduled turnaround. As it was an emergency shutdown, their maintenance team called their maintenance […]
OVERVIEW A refinery in Indonesia, after conducting trial testing and being convinced of the merits of Acoustic Pulse Reflectometry (APR) technology, sought our services. All 100% of their air cooler tubes needed to be inspected within the pit stop duration they had available. Prior to this, they were using sampling methodology with conventional technologies for […]
OVERVIEW One of the world’s largest natural gas liquefaction and fractionation plants is based in Saudi Arabia that produces 1 billion cubic feet of gas per day. The depropanizer that needed to be inspected was 15-year-old and its tubes, which were twisted U-type, had previously never been 100% inspected except with hydro-testing. Conventional technology probes […]
OVERVIEW A 15-year-old LNG carrier in Malaysia was scheduled to set sail when a leak was detected in its boiler tubes thus posing a safety risk. Had all 100% of the tubes not been inspected urgently, and within a very short duration, a mid-ocean tube leakage could have proved disastrous for the carrier and its […]
OVERVIEW The main purpose of the condenser is to maximize turbine efficiency by maintaining a proper vacuum by condensing steam, removing dissolved non-condensable gases from the condensate, and conserving the condensate for re-injection or as feed water for the cooling tower. The maintenance of a geothermal plant is very dependent on local factors, namely, the […]
OVERVIEW A 14-year-old FPSO vessel in Ghana experienced the deterioration of their water tube boiler due to the poor performance of its D-shaped tubes. Since the vessel’s boiler tubes had never been inspected, they needed a preliminary assessment done to verify the condition of these tubes. The vessel had 50 personnel onboard and was producing […]
OVERVIEW Waste Heat Boilers utilize the heat in flue gases from combustion processes or hot waste air flows from industrial processes, to generate hot water or saturated steam. An increased use of wasteheat recovery by refinery/chemical/ petrochemical plants would also serve to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The primary sources of waste heat in industrial […]