Petrochem/Utilities Industry Trends

A Lesson in Equipment Safety: Q&A with Greg Alvarado

Issue Table of Contents

Risk-Based Inspection Paves the Way for Risk Reduction and Cost Savings Fitness for Service: If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It A Lesson in Equipment Safety: Q&A with Greg Alvarado RBI & FFS Standards and Related Publications

Greg Alvarado has more than 27 years of experience in the chemical and refinery industries. He currently specializes in risk-based inspection training and project management for The Equity Engineering Group, Inc. He is a member of the API Sub-Committee on Inspection and NACE committee on Refining Industry Corrosion, and is a past member of the API group that created the recommended practice (RP 580) for risk-based inspection. Greg is also a member of the NACE Process Industries Corrosion & Refining Industry Corrosion committees and is publisher and chief editor of "Inspectioneering Journal".

Q: Why have health and environmental safety initiatives become so important to the industry?

I think it was two-fold. Number one is that we knew we had to comply with government regulations. We wanted to act proactively and come up with something that is effective, that would not only give us compliance, but also best practices.

Also, the markets were becoming much more competitive. For example, before, if someone was pushing 10,000 pounds of product out of a pipe a day, and he was making 10 cents a pound in profit, that's a lot different from today when he's only making 4 cents a pound in profit, because things have gotten so competitive. That means you have to keep product flowing through the pipe. In fact, you need to increase the amount flowing through the pipe to increase profits. Well, in order to be able to do that, you need to ensure that all that equipment is running like it should, so that you have a commensurate degree of reliability — or what we like to call availability.

Q: What went into creating API recommended practices for risk-based inspection (RBI) and fitness-for-service (FFS)?

When we started looking at how to manage this, we asked: What affects equipment availability? The way a guy operates it affects availability. The way it was built affects availability. The way it was maintained affects availability. The way it was installed affects availability. So we begin building the real salient parameters in those areas into the equation. Without inclusion of important parameters or the exclusion of unnecessary information, the accuracy of the results would be suspect and critical input could be missed resulting in over-conservatism in some instances and under-conservatism in others.

The only way we can do that though, is to have really knowledgeable, plant-experienced people help us build the models. And that's why the API technologies are so effective, because the group is exactly that. It's a group of owner/users.

Q: How are RBI and FFS different from older methods?

RBI and FFS are different in that they require more knowledge to apply. You have to have more knowledge about how the equipment is actually being operated today, how it was operated in the past, and how you intend to operate it for a finite time in the future, so that you can accurately extrapolate what the damage will be at that future time.

In the past, standards imposed largely conservative rules on us to try to make up for ignorance. They would force us to have, for example, a 4-to-1 safety factor built into equipment based on original design specifications. But they did not allow for what happens if it doesn't operate the way it's designed. Most equipment is not continuously operated the way it was designed. And if you look at a lot of the plants that are out there today, they're pretty far past their original design life. But that's okay. It's not necessarily a bad thing. So that was the original design life; let's get out there and take a look at it, and see what kind of shape it's in today. And that's what standards like FFS and RBI help us do.

Q: What impact do you think RBI and FFS are going to have on the industry?

I think the biggest impact of RBI is making it possible for the owner/users to better focus their limited resources to more effectively lower the risk of operating equipment in plants. It helps them answer the question: How am I going to get the maximum reduction in risk exposure per dollar spent in my plant? If the database is "mined" properly RBI will also help identify best practices and spot other opportunities, across a plant or corporation.

I think what FFS will do — and it is already doing this — is help to make sure that the right replace, run, and repair decisions are made about equipment. In the past, we would often repair equipment unnecessarily and wind up causing more problems by doing the repair and cause unnecessary downtime. In the course of performing unnecessary repairs, there have been many times when equipment with negligible damage is needlessly exposed to things like heat from welding, or to water, oxygen, or other conditions that actually exacerbates the problem. FFS improves the accuracy of the condition assessment and quality of decisions.

Q: What are some other developments happening in the area of health and environmental safety?

I know that when it comes to things like equipment and RBI, which I work in directly, there is another really exciting thing that is coming down the road called API 571, which is about damage mechanisms that can lead to failure of refinery and chemical plant equipment. What's really nice about that one is that it gives the non-metallurgist or non-corrosion engineer a resource for determining what kind of damage to expect in his equipment and provides the best options for finding and sizing the damage.

There is also considerable work being done within API and the industrial community at large on improving the current safety relief devices documents and references available. Other work is being done on safety instrumentation and controls. There's also constant work being done on developing a better understanding of human effects in plant operation.