Corrosion Prevention a New Market Niche?

The next step that we talked about was, "How did the component fail…the grid coupling?" This is something that a lot of times, once we start doing this, for a grid coupling, if we set up a PM for this you can probably step straight to what kind of inspections would you do and you guys could tell me in three minutes and they’re probably pretty much right on. But I’m using something simple because I didn’t know who’s going to be in the class and what kind of technical skills you guys have. But using something simple and showing you the steps of how we break this down.  I think if we say how would you inspect a coupling that’s going on the run or doing what kind inspections do we need to do and shut down. I think you guys can tell me that. I’ll show you steps anyways so you can see the thinking process using something fairly simple.

At the high temperatures and pressures in boilers, well-operated and maintained chemical feed systems are critical for preventing corrosion. However, the task becomes more challenging if corrosion products from other areas of the system travel to and deposit on boiler tubes. The chemistry beneath deposits can be quite different than in the bulk boiler water, sometimes resulting in severe corrosion. 

The potential-to-functional failure interval (P-F interval) is one of the most important concepts when it comes to performing Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM). Remarkably, the P-F interval is also one of the most misunderstood RCM concepts. The failure mode analysis becomes even more complicated when you are dealing with several P-F intervals for one failure mode. This paper will help clarify the P-F interval and the decision-making process when dealing with multiple P-F intervals.

Visiting plants in different corners of the world, we often are asked: “What are the current best practices for preventive maintenance (PM)?” We usually answer that we define preventive maintenance using 95 key elements. We also point out, to some people’s dismay, that there is no single silver bullet for improving PM, but rather many combined efforts will be required to eventually yield results. Here are a few key elements that have been extracted from our program of Current Best Practices (CBP) along with test questions and best practice (BP) examples to help you gauge how well your plant practices measure up.

I decided to write on this topic because I continually hear people say that oil doesn't go bad, it just gets dirty. This implies that if you keep the oil clean, it will last forever. This is not true. I am frequently dismayed to see how many people simply don't change the oil in certain machines. In general, all in-service lubricants will fail at some point.

Vibration in industrial equipment can be both a sign and a source of trouble. Other times, vibration just “goes with the territory” as a normal part of machine operation, and should not cause undue concern. But how can the plant maintenance professional tell the difference between acceptable, normal vibration and the kind of vibration that requires immediate attention to service or replace troubled equipment?

It was a number of years before the OA community learned that UV spectrometers, while sensitive and accurate for measuring metals in solution, or even at small particulate levels, were not able to detect, let alone measure, particles much above a few microns in diameter. This simply was a technological limitation. Luckily, diesel engines did very well when UV spectrometric testing was employed because a good portion of the wear mechanisms in diesels is sliding wear, which tends to produce very fine particle diameters.