Every maintenance intervention deserves to be viewed as a potential upgrade opportunity. Therefore, I believe any process-industry facility that's anticipating elevated throughput in the near term should incorporate equipment upgrading in its turnaround planning. 

The key to an effective and efficient turnaround is proper and early planning. An effective work plan is achieved by early development of an overall milestone plan called "Planning the Plan." The areas covered by this plan should be discussed, including timing for each of the activities. The key to keeping turnaround cost under control, or within benchmark objectives, is to ensure the work scope only includes those items needed to achieve the current business objectives. This requires that a strict and consistent approach be adhered to for approving work list items.

Generally, capital projects are scheduled with turnarounds. Complete integration of activities associated with the capital project into the overall plan and schedule is of great importance if an efficient turnaround is to be executed. Planning, scheduling, contracting, safety, and other activities need to be integrated into a single plan to ensure the shutdown time will be minimized and the cost held to acceptable levels. Turnaround details merit reassessment if a facility is “run hard” over a given period.

Refinery personnel who know they have run their sites' equipment beyond the customary norm might consider inspection and repair activities to coincide with already pre-planned downtime events. Fortunately, a bit of research will uncover aerospace-derived innovation. Giving thought to the adoption of such innovation will open previously unavailable opportunities for many industries.

Depending on the machines involved, re-thinking inspection and repair downtime would include equipment upgrading. Such upgrading could focus on superbly wear-resistant diffusion-conversion technology used in other industries and might well include time and effort needed to accurately define the internal geometry of rotating machines for which no certified manufacturing drawings exist. Fully automated three-dimensional measuring equipment may be needed to do the job, and many repair centers have it.

Over time, we have come across surprisingly large numbers of fluid machines for which accurate dimensions are unavailable. The original equipment manufacturer (OEM) may have hand-fitted a part. Perhaps that OEM no longer exists, or the equipment was purchased in the pre-owned or surplus-equipment marketplace. In that case, upgrading might reasonably focus on dynamic compressors.

On some of those types of equipment, the surge margin or turndown ratio could be improved. Older fluid machines often consume energy and controlling throughput by simply bypassing or recycling flow is costly. Discontinuing such bypassing can markedly increase efficiency as would, of course, suitable impeller upgrading and optimization. Give it all a thought, please.

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