tce

SAFETY

Ageing for life

management:

Chemical engineers have an important role to play in managing plant degradation, says Stuart Pointer
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LANT ageing is a hot topic in the onshore chemical and petrochemical, and offshore oil and gas industries and for good reason. Equipment degradation can range from the simple (eg rusting of carbon steel) to the complex (eg environmentally-assisted cracking triggered by taking the plant into a temperature range it wasnt intended to experience). Either way, at best this could result in leakage of process fluids or, at worst, catastrophic failure. If ageing isnt managed effectively, the consequences are clearly potentially very serious; loss of containment of process fluids can very easily lead to death and/or serious injury. Plant ageing (ie degradation from its new condition) starts from day one it doesnt just become an issue at some arbitrary point in time when the plant is getting old . For this reason, ageing management regimes need to be in place throughout the life of the plant. While you might assume that this is the province of mechanical engineers, corrosion specialists and metallurgists, this is not always the case, particularly in the onshore industries, where chemical engineers can often find themselves with responsibility for ageing management either at site leadership level or as the engineer charged with managing a third-party inspection body. If youre an engineer with responsibilities in either of these areas you may well find yourself having to answer questions from safety authorities on how your site is managing ageing.

why chemical engineers?

In an ideal world, ageing management would be solely down to mechanical engineers

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(Pictured, far left) A typical situation that can lead to corrosion under insulation (Far right) stress corrosion cracking these cracks go right through the vessel wall.

and associated specialists in corrosion and metallurgy, and to do the job properly they will need to be heavily involved. However, they may not be employed by your company. Increasingly in the onshore sector, we are finding that small-to-medium operations simply do not have the resources to employ professional mechanical engineers. Increasingly, integrity management work is contracted out and managed by a (perhaps the) chemical engineer alongside all their other duties. Similarly, there are many chemical engineers in senior positions who, while they may not have direct responsibility for these issues will be accountable for ensuring that they are managed effectively. Chemical engineers in both of these situations need to have a good understanding of the key elements of managing ageing in order to be able to fulfil their responsibilities effectively and ensure that plant remains fit for service.

maintenance of safety critical equipment (such as pumps dealing with flammable or toxic fluids, fire-fighting equipment, and equipment provided to arrest runaway reactions). I believe the over-riding requirement in achieving an effective integrity management regime when using third parties (whether that is for provision of the full regime or for parts of it) is that the site involved is able to act as an intelligent customer . By this I mean that the person responsible for managing the third party: has a clear understanding of what is needed to manage integrity effectively and comply fully with legal requirements; knows what can be contributed by the site and what needs to come from a third party; and is sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to scrutinise, and where necessary challenge, what is produced by the third party.

key issues

developing an effective regime

Downloads to help in developing an effective regime are available from: SAFed (IMG 1 at http://safed. co.uk/technical-guides/pressureequipment/); and EEMUA (publication 231 at www.eemua.co.uk)

The key things you need to achieve in managing ageing are: continued safe operation of the plant (integrity of the primary containment boundary; functionality of safety critical equipment) compliance with the law (COMAH, PUWER, PSSR each places different demands on you as the duty holder; do you understand what they are?) For the purposes of this article, I am looking primarily at managing ageing of the primary containment boundary, often referred to as integrity management , but similar principles can be applied to the

integrity management checklist

While its not possible to go into too much detail here, some key requirements to effective integrity management are: a clearly-defined regime, with responsibilities documented, covering areas such as defining schemes of examination; conduct of examinations; reporting of examinations; assessment of fitness for service; approval of return to service; and dealing with a need to postpone examinations) appropriately-experienced and qualified people to carry out the critical tasks such as identifying potentially-active degradation
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SAFETY

(Above): Corrosion under insulation (nominal plate thickness was 10 mm) this was found after it started leaking

mechanisms and examination techniques to monitor them (scheme of examination); conducting and reporting on examinations; assessing examination results and establishing fitness for service; and approval. One of the most common problems found in third-party inspection regimes is that schemes of examination do not always address all the degradation mechanisms that could lead to failure of the equipment. So you can often achieve a quick win by challenging your third party to explain how they have established the examination scheme, and gauge in your own mind if this seems sensible. Unfortunately, you cant do this without a basic knowledge of common degradation mechanisms. You dont necessarily need to know a lot of detail, just enough to ask some challenging questions (there are many publications and courses available that will give you a good insight into this area).

as fit to return to service? Who will approve any examination postponements should they become necessary? 3. How have the degradation mechanisms that need to be inspected for been established? Its unlikely that a third party will be able to do this effectively without input from site staff. 4. If your inspection body proposes a regime of inspection which does not include an internal examination (often termed noninvasive inspection) can you make a robust demonstration that this is appropriate? What are the degradation mechanisms and can they be reliably found from outside? Where are you looking and how much of the vessel area is being covered? How confident are you that no critical degradation mechanisms have been missed? (of particular interest here would be mechanisms that could potentially lead to catastrophic failure). 5. How do you satisfy yourself that your third party is delivering the service you require? Finally, remember that ultimately its you and your site that will suffer if you get your integrity management regime wrong, so its in your interest to do whats necessary to ensure that it is fully effective. tce Stuart Pointer (stuart.pointer@hse.gsi.gov. uk) is team leader, mechanical engineering, chemical industries division, Health and Safety Executive The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Health and Safety Executive of Great Britain.

the five key questions

Once you are familiar with integrity management, you should ask yourself (or your third-party expert) the following five questions: 1. What is your third party contracted to provide? You need to be very clear what service you are paying for and which of your legal duties that service covers. For example a service addressing compliance with the Pressure Systems Safety Regulations will, often, not provide all that is necessary to cover your duties under COMAH. 2. Are roles and responsibilities fully defined? This is relevant both to your third party but also within your own organisation. For example who is it that will certify equipment

Increasingly, integrity management work is contracted out and managed by a (perhaps the) chemical engineer alongside all their other duties.
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www.tcetoday.com november 2012