IMPROVING ROTATING EQUIPMENT PERFORMANCE FOR ENHANCEMENT OF RELIABILITY OF REFINERY UNITS – AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Mahesha M P, Ranjith R

Abstract: Crores of money is being spent annually towards premature failure or untimely maintenance and repair of rotary equipments, thereby reducing the operating profit of the company. Rotating equipment and their components, seals, bearings, and couplings etc represent a major opportunity for improving their performance thereby contributing maximum towards plant reliability. Even though the unit are built with the latest API rotating equipments, additional plans for the improvement of reliability are a must. The paper aims to study and review the rotating equipments performance in terms of premature failure and development of plans for maximising the reliability of the unit. The focus of the study is to improve the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of the rotating equipments to maximise the reliability of the refinery units. This paper attempts in a small way to document the promising results in increasing the MTBF of the rotary equipments thereby enhancing the reliability of the refinery units.

Keywords: Maintenance, Rotating equipments, Mechanical seals, Performance, Reliability, Refinery

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2018.0702006