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Application Notes:
Teamwork, Tools and Techniques: How One Plant Brought Thermography in House |
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This story is about a BP natural gas operation in Ulysses, Kansas. The Jayhawk plant processes gas from the wells of several different companies, including its own. To get the gas from its wells to the plant, BP uses compressor stations that boost the pipeline pressure of the natural gas after it flows out of the ground. At the plant, several processes strip waste products off the gas, verify the refined natural gas meets proper BTU contents for distribution, and produce helium, nitrogen, and propane by-products. |
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The toolThermal imaging is ideal for measuring electrical equipment, and this plant has plenty of it's about 115,000 kilowatts coming in. Until recently, the facility had been using a secondary contractor from six and a half hours away to conduct annual thermal imaging surveys of its key electrical equipment. This arrangement was problematic. When plant personnel needed a problem assessed, six and a half hours was too long to wait for a thermographer, especially in downtime situations.
TechniqueEvery year, Alltech spends about three days scanning the plant for electrical problems. The two power control rooms are divided into sections, or buckets, that contain switchgear and breaker sources for the power supply and distribution. The electricians monitor everything in the buckets, checking all of the operating stations and making thermal images of all the electrical connections-from relays to transformers.
TeamworkWith basic training on thermal imaging and good communication on the plant floor, many different facility teams can benefit from thermal imaging. For example, the plant uses extremely cold processes to remove the unwanted gases from the natural gas. In one case, a nitrogen pump had a persistently leaky seal. It had to be changed out regularly. The electricians took a thermal image of the pump. An engineer took one look at the image and realized immediately that there was a restriction preventing the seal from receiving enough cooling airflow.
In general, says Ungles "I use "high, "medium" and "low" designations for scanned equipment with problems. "Low" means it can be addressed sometime. "Medium" means it needs to be to taken care of relatively quickly. "High" signifies do something right away. Each year, I put together a book of my findings, and the facility keeps that book on hand to guide its PdM activities."
The only warning here is to watch out for snowballs. As this plant found out, once thermal imaging comes in house, applications for it appear everywhere, operation costs start to drop...
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