Rotating equipment inspections

Tanks, pressure vessels, piping or rotating equipment containing highly hazardous or flammable chemicals are easily identified by experienced operations personnel as Class 1 equipment. These containment systems must be inspected in some effective manner on a priority basis. 

Rotating Equipment Invites Various Inspection Approaches... 

Inspections of rotating equipment could be accomplished by Preventive Maintenance Programs, which assures that equipment and machine behavior follow some sort of statistical average based upon weeks of operation or throughput in the process stream. Preventive maintenance (PM) programs—the planned, periodic inspection of equipment—reduces the occurrence of unexpected problems. Preventive Maintenance Programs are much more efficient to conduct than the old-fashioned breakdown maintenance programs of previous years in which failures often occur at undesirable times, interfere with production, and may prove to be more costly to correct. [2]... 

Standards are usually developed by nongovernmental not-for-profit agencies. These agencies have committees that create detailed design, inspection, installation, and operating requirements, often for narrowly defined equipment items such as pressure vessels, instruments, and rotating equipment. 

Rotating equipment invites various inspection approaches... 

Inspection before use. The critical safety components of mechanical elevating and rotating equipment shall receive a thorough visual inspection before use on each shift. 

What Visually inspect the critical safety components (i.e., those whose failure would result in a free fall or free rotation of the boom) of mechanical elevating and rotating equipment to ensure it is in safe working condition. 

Most often, utilities do not direcdy contact process streams. Instead, they exchange heat energy (fuel gas, steam, cooling water, and boiler feed water) in equipment such as heat exchangers and process heaters, or they supply work (electric power or steam) to pimps, conpressors, and other rotating equipment. In most cases, the flowrate can be found either by inspection or by doing a sinple heat balance around the equipment. 

As required for inspection, maintenance, testing, or alternative operation of equipment, such as vessels, heaters, rotating equipment, or exchangers... 

It is important to perform periodic inspections of all mechanical equipment and systems that incorporate rotating parts, including couplings and clutches. 

Out-of-limit temperatures for rotating mechanical components and systems are usually based on values established by the manufacturers. Pump and compressor equipment that could benefit from an infrared thermography inspection program include motor gears, bearings, shafts, couplings, V—belts, pulleys, compressors, vacuum pumps, and clutches. 

Welding Control. Plugs in the inner and outer capsules for the sales packages and industrial sources are seal-welded with an argon-shielded or helium-shielded tungsten electrode DC arc. The capsule is rotated under the automatically controlled arc to produce a minimum weld penetration of 1.27 mm. Each weld bead is visually inspected by periscope or by Questar telescope, and imperfectly formed welds are rejected. Weld quality is controlled by periodic metallographic examination of dummy capsules welded in the in-cell equipment. 

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