Investigation, Design and Implementation

Re-design of Furnace Cooling System to prevent repetitive failures and reduce expenditure.

The Project

Our client had suffered multiple Pump failures on their Furnace Cooling circuit. The system was designed with 3 off 50% duty pumps, if a single unit failed the damaged unit could be changed online, avoiding any downtime. However, the cost of each pump was significant with long lead times due to the supplier being US based.

The client requested our assistance when two pumps failed within a short operational period, with no spare pump available. With the plant being shutdown until the new pumps arrived, an alternative solution was required urgently.

We were asked to perform a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and review the original design specification and installation of the pumps to provide a solution which would ensure availability of these critical assets.

Scope of Engineering Works Our Approach The Results

We performed an RCA, reviewed the pump selections and performed a Vibration Analysis on the remaining pump.

Our investigation concluded that the installation allowed for excessive vibration. This vibration ultimately led to the failure of several bearings and other critical components. In a one-year operational period our client had experienced four failures on these critical assets, each causing increased expenditure and plant risk.

The original pumps, although suitable for the application, had a high initial cost and a long lead time for delivery. We specified an alternative pump to replace the original units, with reduced costs and lead times on both the pump and spares kits. The pipework and pump bases were redesigned to accommodate the replacement pumps, and to prevent vibration issues from occurring in the new units.

We led the commissioning of the new units, ensuring the safe and reliable operation whilst certifying that all documentation and records were accurate.

We ensured that a viable solution was found swiftly to reduce the operational downtime for our client. Our solution also allowed for the fabrication of parts in advance of installation, minimising the installation time to ensure the client was back online as soon as possible.

Our solution not only reduced the costs of purchasing and repairing the original pumps, but the newly specified pumps required less power, therefore reducing the on-going running costs.

The project was delivered within 4 weeks, saving our customer £70,000 on replacement pumps and a further 8 weeks of downtime.

We implemented our Vibration Assessment and Management System on the site to ensure maintenance teams could regularly monitor the pumps for any sign of degradation. Since installation (over one year ago) the client has suffered no more failures and vibration levels have remained constant.