INSTRUMENT RELIABILITY - MAINTENANCE IN PROCESS PLANTS

M.T-d-C. Doria, B.E. Jones

Abstract

Industrial processes continually require both operational performance and safety improvements, and these two requirements highlight the need for means of fault diagnosis. The development of condition-based maintenance techniques as opposed to planned maintenance or reactive (after failure) maintenance practices is a tendency that has shown impressive growth and promises to dominate the scenario in the near future. Instruments play an essential role in the achievement of the expected results, but the instruments themselves can be sources of unreliability and fault within industrial plants. An analysis of the main instrument maintenance challenges encountered in industrial process plants, and classification of the critical failure modes of the most important types of instrument employed are discussed. The various means to allow implementation of condition-based and life-time evaluation maintenance programmes for instruments are surveyed and an analysis of their applicability to help solve the listed problems is also developed.

Keywords

instrument reliability, process plant maintenance, fault diagnostics

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IMEKO-WC-2000-QM-P554.pdf

DOI

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