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Preventive Maintenance

Lubrication

Lube Routes vs. Combo PMs: What’s Best? What are the Issues?

In an ideal world, the lube route is the perfect answer. Group activities based on commonality of frequency, task type (e.g. motor regreasing) or area of the plant and execute in one block. It’s efficient, effective and cuts down on paperwork by having just one work order for tens or even hundreds of tasks. The key here is “ideal world” – few if any of us live in this utopia, which causes some very real problems when it comes to executing what I tend to call “macro” lube routes.

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Equipment Knowledge

The 7 Secrets of Pump Reliability

Contrary to popular opinion, a centrifugal pump is not designed to develop a specific head at a certain capacity as requested by the pump purchaser. In fact a pump is designed and built to produce a whole range of head-capacity conditions as identified by it’s performance curve. The pump will operate on that curve if it is driven at the designated speed.

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Preventive Maintenance

The Role of Fireside Corrosion on Boiler Tube Failures: Part 2

One of the primary challenges of reliably burning coal is managing the corrosion experienced by the furnace heat transfer surfaces. Fireside corrosion remains a leading cause of failure in boiler tube, in both superheater and reheater tubes. Boiler tubes affected by fireside corrosion also may lose 15 mils per year (mpy), or more in extreme cases

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Preventive Maintenance

The Role of Fireside Corrosion on Boiler Tube Failures

One of the primary challenges of reliably burning coal is managing the corrosion experienced by the furnace heat transfer surfaces. Fireside corrosion remains a leading cause of failure in superheater and reheater tubes. Also, tubes affected by the fireside corrosion mechanism may lose 15 mils per year (mpy) and more in extreme cases. Five case studies (three presented here in Part 1) examine the different failure modes experienced by tubes located throughout the furnace.

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Equipment Knowledge

The Affinity Laws for Rotary, Positive Displacement Pumps 13-6

The affinity laws accurately predict the affect of changing the speed of a centrifugal or rotary pump, and they also do a fairly good job of predicting the affect of changing the diameter of a centrifugal pump. In another paper (02-01) we discussed the affinity laws as they apply to centrifugal pumps, but in this paper we will look at their use with rotary pumps.

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Preventive Maintenance

Temperature Shock of Hydraulic Components and How to Avoid it

When there is a significant difference between the temperature of a hydraulic component and the fluid being supplied to it, rapid, localized heating of the internal parts of the component can occur. This causes individual parts of the component to expand at different rates, resulting in interference between parts that normally have fine clearances.

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Preventive Maintenance

Steam Maintenance: Inspect Steam Traps for Efficient System

Unfortunately, when it comes to steam traps, people often ignore them. There’s a complacency about them that is costing steam users much more than they realize. The hard reality of a plant maintaining its boiler and forgetting about the rest of the steam system can be a horribly wasteful proposition. Losses can include not only wasted energy but replacement of damaged equipment and misuse of man-hours. It is not uncommon to discover system losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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hydraulic pump particle contamination
Preventive Maintenance

Hydraulic Pump Life Cut Short by Particle Contamination

Contaminants of hydraulic fluid include solid particles, air, water or any other matter that impairs the function of the fluid. Particle contamination accelerates the wear of hydraulic components. The rate at which damage occurs is dependent on the internal clearance of the components within the system, the size, the quantity of particles present in the fluid, and the system pressure.

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Preventive Maintenance

Double the Drive Life at One-Third of the Cost

Many drive systems go to an early grave after only about 10 years of operation. Reconditioning an existing drive system could enable it to operate reliably for another decade and can be achieved for just 30-40% of the cost of a new drive system. Peter Wright, Drives Products Service Manager for ABB in the UK explains how. 

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