By Tony Maupin
The last thing you see before entrusting your life to an old spring latch and rusty R-Key pin is a shifty grin. You’re on one of the staples of carnival midways across the country, the Zipper. Spectators watch as old cages that have been dismantled and put back together hundreds, maybe thousands of times, zip and flip around as the door safety pins also flap loosely in the breeze. Could those little pins really hold the door shut with the full weight of two bodies pressing against them? Is it even put in properly?
This may be part of the intentional fear factor of a carnival ride, but this situation plays out in reality all over the United States at processing plants. The safety of employees and the surrounding communities often rely on equipment just as neglected or improperly applied as the Zipper’s R-Key pins.
The best line of defense any facility has against accidents is a complete understanding of its process integrity. That story is largely told by readings on pressure and temperature instruments.
While electronic sensors have overtaken mechanical gauges as primary indicators of process status, mechanical gauges provide local and back-up readings that are needed to access operations from the plant floor. These gauges, however, have been neglected and misapplied for so many years that it’s valid to wonder if confidence in their reliability is warranted.
At WIKA, we wondered the same thing. Through years servicing these mechanical gauges at processing plants, it became clear to us that most facilities we visited were not operating as safely and reliably as they should because many of their gauges, which help measure performance, weren’t working. To address this, WIKA created the Full Audit Service Team (FAST). FAST is made up of instrumentation engineers who help investigate, diagnose and correct issues with gauges as a value-added service.
After more than 250 instrument audits, our discoveries were as astounding as they were troubling. 25 percent of the gauges inspected by the FAST team were either failing or about to fail due to misapplication, neglect or abuse. Breaking down these findings even further, the average employee at these facilities was located within 20 feet of 7.6 gauges in need of immediate attention.
This is quite alarming when you consider that gauges are a plant’s early warning system, providing readings that can help identify mounting threats. When they become unreliable, these threats can develop into major problems such as media leaks, fires, explosions or major disasters, compromising safety and productivity.
Not only can problematic gauges fail to warn of conditions in need of attention, they also can become sources of leaks themselves. Mechanical pressure gauges rely on Bourdon tubes to convert readings into understandable displays. Thin and fine in nature, Bourdon tubes are the smallest degree of separation between process media and the outside world. When compromised, a Bourdon tube can leak media.
Any facility manager knows that media leakage of any kind can quickly spiral out of control. Process media is often highly caustic or flammable, creating imminent danger for nearby employees and those called on to correct the problem. Leakages can lead to emergency shutdowns that cost tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity. And if casualties are involved, the cost of a safety incident is all but guaranteed to exceed $1 million.
Plant operators are generally excellent at maintaining expensive equipment that is difficult to repair and could cause an obvious catastrophe if it failed. This often comes at the expense of proper maintenance for smaller, less-considered components like gauges. Major equipment should always be maintained – no argument there — but care must also be given to the integrity of gauges. Hiding in plain sight throughout every facility, these instruments are inexpensive and simple to maintain; you just have to know how.
The fact is, many facilities no longer know how. Over the past several decades, instrumentation engineers have retired and often are not replaced. As a result, responsibility for mechanical gauge maintenance usually moves to generalized technicians who lack the specialized knowledge to ensure proper application and configuration of these devices. In some plants, nobody takes ownership of gauge maintenance at all.
Every processing plant should have a complete understanding of how to correctly apply and maintain mechanical gauges. The brain drain of exiting gauge experts has left a void presenting real safety and productivity risks. As a result, plants have turned to third-party engineering consultants to assess the problems and advise them on corrections, usually for a hefty fee.
A more recent trend mirrors what we have done at WIKA: creation of audit teams by equipment manufacturers to provide analysis and solutions by instrumentation experts. When these services are provided on a value-added basis, they can be more attractive and viable than hiring consultants. It’s also difficult to surpass the expertise of engineers employed by companies that design and manufacture instruments.
Now that options for ensuring the integrity of plant equipment are expanding, we can expect safety to improve and accidents to decline; at least for facilities that take advantage of these services. It makes good sense for every plant operator to consider the options and engage in an instrumentation integrity program as soon as possible.
Tony Maupin is a Senior Instrumentation Engineer for WIKA Instrument’s Full Audit Service Team. FAST services are available at no charge to help plants improve safety, productivity and profitability. Visit www.WIKA-FAST.com for more information. WIKA is a leading global manufacturer of pressure and temperature measurement instrumentation.
