Hydrocarbon Processing - April 2022 - 23

Special Focus Maintenance and Reliability
M. PARADIES, System Improvements Inc.,
Knoxville, Tennessee; and H. P. BLOCH,
Process Machinery Consulting, Montgomery, Texas
Use straightforward troubleshooting
and failure analysis to benefit the HPI
To operate reliably and profitably, oil
to build substandard levies and flawed
refineries, petrochemical plants and gas
processing facilities must avoid equipment
failures. In the event such failures
occur, the plant must find and remedy
the root causes of these failures. Bestin-class
facilities are reaching and maintaining
this enviable status by pursuing
repeatable failure analysis and troubleshooting
(FA/TS). Guesses are rarely
correct: they can lead to costly and even
dangerous fixes. By their very nature,
mere brainstorming sessions lack structure
and timely, tangible results.
Experience shows that troubleshooting
and failure analysis activities will terminate
in only three possibilities:
* The failure cause is determined
and removed from the inventory of
future failure possibilities
* The failure cause is not found, and
a recurrence is likely
* The failure cause is found but not
disclosed to parties interested in
doing anything about it.
Reliability professionals agree that
discovery and permanent remedial action
of the true root cause of a failure is
the only correct course of action. These
reliability-focused professionals will
readily agree that inaccurate troubleshooting
leads to incorrect conclusions
and wasted time. Because the analyst
or troubleshooter is under pressure to
do something, tinkering at the fringes of
procedural changes or design modifications
is quite common. Moreover, hiding
behind claims that a failure is an " act of
God " is common, albeit inappropriate.
The Almighty may permit that a city built
below sea level is damaged by a flood after
the levies break and the pumps fail,
but the Almighty did not ask the people
pumping equipment. The chain of events
always originates or leads to decisions
and indecisions, actions and/or inaction
by humans who, finally, are nowhere near
as perfect as they would have us believe.
Reasons to improve troubleshooting
methods. Of course, nothing devised by
man is perfect, nor will it ever be. Problems
of one kind or another will always
exist. In other words, troubles must be
identified and remedied. Regrettably,
troubleshooting is usually done after a
problem surfaces. Suppose there was a
time when the sugar cane crop failed, and
the landowner attributed the problem
to the sugar cane worm. Since pesticides
had not yet been invented, he countered
the threat with imported beetles that ate
sugar cane worms. When the beetles took
over, he imported ugly beetle-eating toads
which, unbeknownst to him, preferred
to decimate his previously profitable tobacco
leaf crop. This made him decide to
import Genovese disease-carrying rats as
the cure. These rats failed to do the job,
but by the time he considered red foxes as
the problem solvers, he realized that the
red fox recommendation came from gentrified
landowners whose ulterior motive
was nothing but hunting foxes.
While some of the above is indeed a
bit far-fetched, there is also a measure of
truth in it. It pays to consider the message:
Do not tackle serious problems with temporary
fixes. Recommend solutions that
are backed up by both data and science.
Try not to endorse remedies that have unintended
consequences or run counter to
the satisfactory experience record of others.
Therefore, investigate or pay attention
to others and try to learn from them.
A few fundamental facts are usually
recognized and accepted by the leaders
of modern industry: inadequate troubleshooting
leads to higher costs, wasted
time and makes the company's troubleshooting
team look unprofessional. Because
we, the co-authors, have made our
living as troubleshooters,
allow us to
make use of these facts in demonstrating
simple examples of solving randomly occurring
process pump problems that can
be tackled by using course content that
combines1
several proven approachesa
.
THE SEVEN ROOT-CAUSE
FAILURE ANALYSIS
Collecting a large failure mode inventory
while realizing that such an inventory
will differ for different machines and their
components makes considerable sense.
Examining this inventory and conducting
a structured review of data observed during
and after a failure makes it possible to
draw conclusions as to the failure's origin.
The reviewer or failure analyst should
concentrate on deviations from proper
design, component function, appropriate
coatings, and many other factors.
However, generalities that lead to a
so-called " shotgun approach " must be
avoided. In shotgun-style failure analysis
and troubleshooting, much time is often
wasted on debates that lack both focus
and value. There will then be a trend towards
verbalizing scenarios that are a mix
of the probable and highly improbable,
the reasonable and unreasonable, the
often observed and perhaps things that
have never happened since Leonardo
sketched a helicopter for tentative future
use by Igor Sikorsky. Do not disregard
everything that happened in the 440-yr
span between those two inventors. NevHydrocarbon
Processing | APRIL 2022 23
Hydrocarbon Processing - April 2022

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