Risk-Based Inspection Model for Heat Exchanger Tube Bundles

• Main Author: Basir, Muhammad Hisyamuddin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: IRC 2015
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/15722/1/FYP%20DISSERTATION_16253.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/15722/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Petronas

eat exchangers are widely used by many industries such as petrochemical, power generation, and oil and gas industries. The safety while operating heat exchanger is heavily concerned. Hazard of heat exchanger especially in those industries may end up with risk related issues. Many companies nowadays apply the conditionbased inspection programs whereby the bundle life is predicted by analyzing the history of each exchanger bundle since the service start date. As the result, the financial consequences will not be considered associated with the bundle life while analyzing the reliability of the exchanger. Thus, an effective risk assessment model is required to assess failures associated with heat exchanger and to achieve plant availability and efficiency. This study presents the development of a risk-based inspection model for heat exchanger. The project is carried out to assist operator/user that operates heat exchanger to develop a customized maintenance optimization tool for selecting cost effective and appropriate maintenance and inspection tasks and techniques in determining the risk level of mode of failures associated with the heat exchanger. A comprehensive literature review related to the project topic is carried out from several journals and books available and being analyzed which consist of the overview of the Risk-Based Inspection (RBI) model, analysis of some of the existing RBI model, the overview of heat exchanger, description and analysis of currently used semi-quantitative risk assessment matrix method and the application of Microsoft Excel and Visual Basic Applications (VBA) in developing RBI model. Apart from that, Weibull distribution will be discussed further to understand its use in determining the probability of failure through life data analysis. The application of Microsoft Excel is proposed to ease the process of inspection by using the developed RBI model. Then, the program built will be validated with several available software in the market such as Weibull++ and RBI developed by Reliasoft Corp. The sample of validated historical data of inspection of heat exchanger from API RBI will be used to justify the risk level for each failures associated by applying the life data analysis. The scope of study for this research include establish the life data analysis by using Weibull analysis, analyze the risk value associated with several modes of failure and propose the inspection plan based on the result of analysis.