Quality of equipment

As noted above, the number of integrated instruments has grown tremendously. However, the intrinsic quality of equipment that can be considered as subsystems or components for assembling, for instance, an imaging luminometer has also greatly increased. As a consequence, even today, an expert user may assemble a unit to carry out a specific job with good efficiency. 

Check on the quality of equipment decontamination procedures involving the "swiping" of sterile filter paper over sampling equipment after decontamination has occurred, followed by chemical analysis of the field swipe and an unused filter paper. Volume 2(10). 

A non-conformity control is being implemented gradually. By non-conformity control is meant the verification of any deficiency in characteristics, documentation and procedures which makes unacceptable or indeterminate the quality of equipment, materials, samples or the result of a study or of an analysis. This may then entail corrective actions. This is particularly important when using facilities not uniquely dedicated to the monitoring effort, but shared with other analytical work, as is the case with the PNRA. 

Increase in production and quality of equipment, systems and energy services ... 

The mechanical performance of equipment is likely to deteriorate with use due to wear, corrosion, erosion, vibration, contamination and fracture, which may lead to failure. Since this would threaten a typical production objective of meeting quality and quantity specifications, maintenance engineering provide a service which helps to safely achieve the production objective. 

The purpose of the nondestructive control consists in detecting local modifications of the material parameters which, by their presence can endanger the quality of the half-finished or finished products. The electromagnetic nondestructive control permits to render evident surface and subsurface discontinuities in the electroconductive material under test. The present tendency of this control is to pass from a qualitative evaluation (the presence or absence of the material discontinuities which give at the output of the control equipment a signal higher or at least equal to that coming from a standard discontinuity whose shape and severity has been prescribed by the product standards) to a quantitative one, which enables to locate as exactly as possible the discontinuity and to make predictions over its shape and severity. 

For safety reasons, the main components of industrial installations must undergo NDT so as to guarantee the functional capacities of equipment by verifying the integrity of the materials. This paper presents the EDF project to improve the quality for detection, localization and characterization of incoming faults inside materials, and to increase the performance of X or y radiographic analysis. 

To evaluate the image quality of the processing system, one can determine classical parameters like spatial resolution, contrast resolution, dynamic range, local and global distortion. Guidelines for film digitization procedures have been well described now. Furthermore, a physical standard film for both equipment assessment and digitization calibration and control, will be available in a next future (4). 

As the safety and quality of industrial components, equipments and constructions is correlated with the inspection sensitivity and this is influenced in radiography by the film system class, a continuous supervision of the film systems on the market seems to be urgently necessary. To support the confidence of the film users in the film properties specified by the film manufacturers such a system for quality assurance for industrial x-ray films is proposed by some manufacturers and BAM. This system will be open to all manufacturers, distributers and users of x-ray films. It will deal with all film systems inclusive those which are not specified by a manufacturer as for instance mixed systems. The system for quality assurance will be based... 

NDT equipment widely used for definition of safety and quality of produets must ensure uniformity and reliability of measurements realised with them. 

Those instructions outlining how to properly use equipment and instrumentation to ensure the quality of measurements. 

BWRs operate at ca 7 MPa (70 bar) and 288°C. Some of the coolant passing through the core is converted into steam which is separated from the water with equipment inside the reactor vessel (see Eig. 2). The steam goes to the turbine generator while the water is recirculated back to the bottom of the core. A side stream is continuously purified using deminerali2ers and filters to control the water quality of the reactor water. EuU-flow condensate deminerali2ers... 

Product Quality Considerations of product quahty may require low holdup time and low-temperature operation to avoid thermal degradation. The low holdup time eliminates some types of evaporators, and some types are also eliminated because of poor heat-transfer charac teristics at low temperature. Product quality may also dic tate special materials of construction to avoid met hc contamination or a catalytic effect on decomposition of the product. Corrosion may also influence evaporator selection, since the advantages of evaporators having high heat-transfer coefficients are more apparent when expensive materials of construction are indicated. Corrosion and erosion are frequently more severe in evaporators than in other types of equipment because of the high hquid and vapor velocities used, the frequent presence of sohds in suspension, and the necessary concentration differences. 

QRA practitioners can use to satisfy some QRA objectives. Also, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) has sponsored a project to expand and improve the quality of component failure data for chemical industry use. And many process facilities have considerable equipment operating experience in maintenance files, operating logs, and the minds of operators and maintenance personnel. These data can be collected and combined with industrywide data to help achieve reasonable QRA objectives. However, care must be exercised to select data most representative of your specific system from the wide range available from various sources. Even data from your own plant may have to be modified (sometimes by a factor of 10 or more) to reflect your plant s current operating environment and maintenance practices. 

There are a variety of ways to express absolute QRA results. Absolute frequency results are estimates of the statistical likelihood of an accident occurring. Table 3 contains examples of typical statements of absolute frequency estimates. These estimates for complex system failures are usually synthesized using basic equipment failure and operator error data. Depending upon the availability, specificity, and quality of failure data, the estimates may have considerable statistical uncertainty (e.g., factors of 10 or more because of uncertainties in the input data alone). When reporting single-point estimates or best estimates of the expected frequency of rare events (i.e., events not expected to occur within the operating life of a plant), analysts sometimes provide a measure of the sensitivity of the results arising from data uncertainties. 

The safety, availability and capacity of production plants are predetermined by the quality of the materials and the corrosion protection measures in the essential areas both are major considerations in the initial planning. Even today, damage to equipment and tanks is often assumed to be unavoidable and the damaged components are routinely replaced. By carrying out damage analysis, which points the way to knowledge of prevention of damage, the availability and life of plants can be increased considerably. This particularly applies to the use of anodic protection. 

Regulatory control is governmental imposition of limits on emission from sources. In addition to quantitative limits on emissions from chimneys, vents, and stacks, regulations may limit the quantity or quality of fuel or raw material permitted to be used the design or size of the equipment or process in which it may be used the height of chimneys, vents, or stacks the location of sites from which emissions are or are not permitted or the times when emissions are or are not permitted. Regulations usually also specify acceptable methods of test or measurement. 

The trends begun with the general introduction of FTIR technology will undoubtedly continue. It is safe to say that the quality of the data being produced far exceeds our ability to analyze it. In fact, for many current applications, the principle limitations are not with the equipment, but rather with the quality of the samples. Thus, the shift from qualitative to quantitative work will proceed, reaching high levels of sophistication to address the optical and matrix interference problems discussed above. 

---