A major uncertainty for plant managers is whether or not key pieces of equipment can remain in service and perform well until the next turnaround. To overcome this uncertainty, and avoid the associated risk of an unanticipated shutdown, it is not uncommon for equipment to be replaced long before its useful life is expended. While such an approach is conservative, it is not necessarily cost-effective. Quest Reliability can apply a toolkit of products, knowledge and services to devise strategies for allowing critical equipment to remain in service for as long as possible, consistent with a customer’s performance criteria.
LifeQuest™ product line: Quest Reliability has developed a proprietary bundled product (software, data and expert analysis) called LifeQuest™ that addresses remaining life and life extension strategies for certain key components of high temperature plant. These LifeQuest™ products include:
- LifeQuest™ Reformer for steam reformer units in refineries, synthetic gas plants and other processing industries. In addition to custom FEA software incorporating a creep model specialized for the HP alloys that are used in most reformer tubes, this product includes a proprietary database of testing-based material properties for reformer tubes, and laboratory-based tube-catalyst interactions. The product also directly imports and analyzes tube inspection data from our proprietary LOTIS® system. LifeQuest™ Reformer provides reformer tube life extension and management capabilities that are unique and unmatched in the industry.
- LifeQuest™ Heater, for fired heater systems in refineries, petrochemcial plants, and other process industries. Our custom software is based on API 579 fitness-for-service standard. The service utilizes 100% of the FTIS® data and provides both a deterministic and probabilistic remaining life assessment.
- LifeQuest™ HEP, for high-energy piping such as superheater and reheater piping in thermal power stations. This product includes the custom FEA software, linkage to materials databases, and remaining life assessment based on the omega method of creep strain analysis. The custom FEA software includes specialized mesh geometries for girth welds and other features of interest in HEP systems.
The result of applying LifeQuest™ to an aging piece of equipment is a probabilistic prediction of life expectancy (time to failure) for various damage mechanisms. The probabilistic form of the prediction, and the data obtained from a Monte-Carlo sensitivity analysis, allow the owner to describe a baseline life expectancy as well as the range and mix of conditions under which the equipment can be operated without creating a life-shortening condition. This information is used to develop a life extension strategy for that piece of equipment, consistent with the customer’s reliability and safety criteria. The strategy typically will include maintenance and inspection procedures and protocols, operating envelope, inspection data mileposts, and recommendations for follow-up analysis.
Custom and specialized life prediction studies: In addition to the LifeQuest™ suite of products, Quest Reliability also performs remaining life assessments and development of life extension strategies for a broader range of process plant equipment, including:
The approach to remaining life assessment and development of life extension strategies for these equipment types is similar to that used in the LifeQuest™ process, but requires a custom-developed spatial model and development of other analytical model parameters and specifications from manufacturer’s data, literature and condition assessment or testing data, due to the non-standard configurations of most of these equipment types.
For further information about Plant Life Extensions, please contact us.