Fin Fan in a Crude Distillation Unit Monitoring Case
The Real-time Diagnostic COMPACS® System monitors one of the most important oil enterprises. Let’s look at this example of a liquidated root causes of failures of a Fin Fan in a Crude Distillation Unit.
Air-Coolers Failure
One day, The COMPACS® equipment monitoring system informed operators that the technical state of all operating air-coolers worsened and became “Unacceptable”.
Receiving the system’s prescription “Check looseness”, the operators attempted to relieve destructive forces by switching two coolers out of operation. This improved the condition of other machines.
Equipment Trend Analysis
On the system’s Trend mode, we can see that that situation appeared several times and each time the operators successfully avoided the issue in the same way.
After a while, the fifth cooler reached an Unacceptable state, and the operator’s attempt to improve the fin fan’s health by switching the two closest machines off failed. They were forced to decommission the air-cooler and request maintenance.
Diagnostics for Fin Fan Maintenance
Using the system’s ANALYSIS mode, the maintenance team figured out that many harmonics in the frequency range of 5-12 Hz appeared in the displacement spectrum. This is evidence of evolving looseness.
The Maintenance team tightened bolts on the cooling pad and enhanced stiffness of that structure. Eventually, the vibration dropped dramatically and became 8 times less.
Fixing the Fin Fans
By tightening the cooler’s attachment to the structure, they considerably decreased the destructive loads on the electric motor bearings and fan blades.
This case proves how looseness of the machine may affect the health of adjacent ones. By revealing and eliminating the root cause of vibration of one fin fan, the personnel prevented inevitable repair of all air-coolers on that structure.
Only early diagnostics can prevent failures while reducing maintenance costs and extending operation of a process unit.
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