(Petro)chemical
The prevention of unplanned downtime
In all industry segments, but especially in the (petro) chemical industry, production processes are very critical. Failing machinery quickly leads to unplanned downtime of the whole plant, with high costs as a result. Besides the costs have safety and environmental concerns an important role. Suddenly failing machinery can lead to unsafe situations for the personnel as well as for the environment.
Set-up of a condition monitoring program
The following case study describes the situation at one of our customers who is operating from the "Europoort" Rotterdam and produces pesticides and plant protection products. Because of their critical influence on the process, various pumps and fans are measured every month. However two centrifuges and one fan are solely responsible for the supply of the whole factory. Any malfunction of one of these machines will directly lead to a full stop of the whole factory and a neighbouring factory that uses the remaining material as its basis.
Because of this large dependency it was decided to reduce the measurement interval for these three machines to every two weeks. This means that during one visit only the three most critical machines are measured and analysed and that during the following visit all the other pumps and fans are measured and analysed as well. Already more than 20 years now this method ensures the most optimized condition monitoring program for our customer and reduces unplanned downtime to a minimum.
A wide range of maintenance services
The condition monitoring program has proven its use many times in the past years. Many damaged bearing, cavitation problems, resonance problems and imbalance related problems have been detected in an early stage.
Besides the periodical measurements for the predictive maintenance we also perform many other services for this and other customers in the (petro) chemical industry.
- Balancing
- Alignment
- Trouble shooting
- Resonance investigations