Case study

 Place: A steel plant in Rourkela with production capacity - 4.5 MTPA


Date of Execution: 20th July 2019

Equipment Criticality: High

Background:

A Steam turbine blower was to be commissioned in a steel plant by a leading EPC company, the pipelines were erected on the site and as per the Standard Operating Procedure listed by the Steel Plant Owner Company the flushing was completed with a single auxiliary pump at 1500 LPM. However, during the trial run of the turbine, the inline lube oil filters would clog very frequently and lead to halted operations.

Problem Statement:

Frequent clogging of inline lube oil filters were hindering the operations and delaying the steam turbine commissioning project

Underlying Issues:

On inspection, a root cause analysis was done and the required rate for effective flushing was calculated as 3500 LPM. The Particle contamination level was also found to be NAS 10. Hence following things were concluded:

  1. The rate at which flushing was done was too low and lead to ineffective flushing, leaving a lot of debris and scale inside the pipeline.
  2. Absence of a System other than the inline filters to arrest the particles which would come along with the flushing flow.
  3. The maximum flow rate that could be achieved on-site was 3000 LPM.

What Minimac did:

  1. The calculated effective rate for flushing was 3500 LPM, but as only 3000 LPM was achievable on-site, the temperature of the fluid was increased by regular heating arrangement to bring down the required flowrate requirement to 2500 LPM.
  2. Both the auxiliary pumps were employed for flushing activity and a separate filtration skid was offered which could handle the full flow volume that was getting generated.
  3. Duplex type filtration housing on the lube oil return side was also provided to arrest any future debris. Subsequently, turbine governing and Heat Exchanger were also taken online to clean the system in totality.

Result achieved:

The Lines were successfully flushed and a NAS 5 lube oil cleanliness level was achieved.

We at Minimac Systems Pvt Ltd. provide services Oil Purification, Oil Flushing, Oil Condition Monitoring that helps you reduce downtime and increase machine reliability.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Control System Of Turbine - Failure & Maintenance

Image
Control System The turbine control system describes the control over the opening of control valves corresponding to demand signals, and steam flows into the turbine with the help of a governing system that facilitates the operation of the turbo set in an interconnected grid system. Governing system is responsible for various function such as speed & load control functions, the start-up/shut-down controls, the over-speed control, turbine stress calculation, to control the initial run-up and synchronization of the Unit, to assists in matching the power generated to that demanded by responding to system frequency changes, to regulate the steam control valves position (and hence the load generated)in response to signal from the operator or from the load dispatch Centre, to restrict the speed rise within acceptable limits should the unit get disconnected (islanding) from the lgridoad and some protective trip functions. With continuous research and developments in modern turbine technolo
Read more

Minimac Technology

Image
 The secret recipe of the growth story at Minimac Syste ms has been its capability to drive technological advancement in the field of contamination control for lubrication reliability. Research and development on technology and products have always been the key reason to keep the Minimac products a step ahead of its competitors in the market. Technological development has been one of the core competencies which Minimac possesses, thereby ensuring a definite competitive advantage. Contaminations in lubricants are of various types and characteristics depending on the lubricant, equipment application, ambient conditions, age of equipment, etc. In order to control, separate or eliminate the contamination, there are multiple techniques. Each technique has pros and cons and hence there is no single technology that can be considered universally better than others. ​ Minimac Systems over the years has become equipped with almost all the technologies which are required for contaminat
Read more

Storage Management of Oil Products and its Importance.

Image
Product storage is an important criterion for any segment of products. It plays a vital role in the longevity of the products, every product in any form has a certain life period and this life period forms the baseline of the product. Coming to the lubricating oil industry, product life period plays an important role in the smooth running of the machinery and the plant. As these oils play a very important role in the day to day functioning of critical machinery, so if not maintained properly these can lead to the breakdown of machinery thereby leading to a shutdown of the plant which leads to the incurrence of huge loss. Therefore it is very important that these oils should be used well in advance before their life period expires. We can hereby pen down certain prerequisite conditions for storage of lubricants: 1.  Pre usage Inspection : It is mandatory to verify their performance properties & conditions with oil analysis for the oils that have been kept for a long pe
Read more