Why Maintenance Managers Need To Rethink How They Track the Health of Their Operations
It’s the scenario every maintenance manager dreads: detecting a mechanical fault that forces them to shut down operations. And there’s arguably a scenario equally as painful: shutting down operations, only to find there wasn’t a problem to fix in the first place.
By getting a complete picture of how your assets are performing (rather than trying to infer what’s happening), you can make more informed decisions that ultimately help you protect your plant and your profitability.
In the following article, I’ll explain how this is possible in relation to a core area of your operations: your dry gas seal health. As you’ll see, it involves an innovative industry approach to asset monitoring.
Before going into detail, I’d like to share how this approach helped one oil and gas company achieve dramatic results.
Saving Millions on Lost Productivity With Better Data
A few years ago, a world-leading gas producer faced the issues described above.
They were relying purely on their primary vent leakage reading to monitor the health of their mechanical seals. With such limited information, they were forced to shut down operations whenever they saw high-vibration measurements on the compressor (for fear that the seals were potentially being damaged).
In reality, most events did not impact the mechanical seal, but the resulting shutdown cost a week of lost production.
Working with this gas producer, John Crane helped them gain deeper insights into the health of their seals, which resulted in them reducing unplanned shutdowns and saving an estimated $4 million in lost production .
Here’s how that cost-saving was possible.
See What’s Possible With John Crane Sense ® Turbo
To help solve the problem our client was facing, we installed one of our core solutions: John Crane Sense Turbo.
It features a bundle of sensors embedded into the dry gas seal. Monitoring conditions at the heart of the compressor, it acts as your ‘digital eyes and ears’, helping you protect your critical assets and improve the overall health of your operations.
Here’s How It Works:
John Crane Sense Turbo features a suite of sensors:
- Acoustic emissions sensor: This detects when there’s contact between the rotating and stationary faces of the seal, which could indicate wear or damage.
- Liquid presence sensor: This detects liquid leaks within the seal. It functions by sending a light signal through an optical cable. When interrupted by liquid, the system detects a change, indicating a leak.
- Temperature sensors: Two separate sensors help detect local temperatures in the seal during operation and potential temperature extremes that may exceed the operating or design limits of the seal.
How the Right Data Leads to a Measurable Impact
The data collected by the sensors is combined, processed by our John Crane Sense software, and sent to the cloud for storage and analysis. Your team can access this data in real-time from any device and receive alerts and alarms if a potential issue is detected and needs investigating.
This differs from relying on basic data collected outside the mechanical seal, which is how most oil and gas companies understand what’s happening.
So, in practical terms, how can John Crane Sense Turbo benefit your operations?
Reduced downtime: It provides an accurate picture of your seal health, helping minimize unexpected failures and downtime. Furthermore, it helps eliminate the uncertainty that might lead you to shut down operations, only to find the seal was functioning correctly.
Extended seal life: Data analysis and pattern matching provide a deeper understanding of the seal’s remaining useful life, so you can take corrective action to extend its use.
Cost savings: By understanding the remaining useful life of a mechanical seal, our solution could add months or years before equipment repair is needed, significantly reducing maintenance costs.
Improved reliability: It can Identify potential issues early, helping improve the overall reliability of the compressor.
Performance optimization: John Crane Sense Turbo lets you assess the health of dry gas seals and understand how to optimize the reliability and performance of your rotating equipment.
We Help You Protect What Matters
At John Crane, we have over 850,000 hours of dry gas seal monitoring, and we’ve helped oil and gas companies substantially reduce the costs and disruption of unplanned downtime while extending useful seal life.
To find out how we can help you, get in touch with us today.
Author
Adrian Conrad
Sense Product Manager, John Crane
