RBI Implementation for Process Plant Piping — A Case Study Using an Optimized Approach

Introduction

In a highly competitive world of challenging oil and gas market prices, operational excellence has become a necessity. Asset Integrity Management (AIM) lies at the heart of Operational Excellence.  One of the AIM optimization tools is Risk-Based Inspection (RBI). RBI provides a framework for understanding, identifying and mitigating business risks to maximize safety and optimize equipment reliability and resource allocation.  This framework follows a systematic approach for evaluating risk, analysing both the Probability of Failure (PoF) and Consequence of Failure (CoF).

Implementing RBI for process piping can be a very tedious and lengthy exercise, especially for major process plants with thousands of feet of interconnected piping. Thus, conducting RBI assessments for all piping can be a very time and resource consuming process.

This article shares the experience of ADNOC LNG following a structured RBI approach for piping groups. Piping was grouped based on process systems, corrosion circuits, PWHT application, corrosion allowances, and representative fluids. Then, RBI assessments were done to establish a representative line for the group while assessment results of risk and mitigation plans were copied to the remaining piping within the group.

The approach described in this article ensures that there is no sacrifice in assessment quality and no gaps would be found in piping integrity. By applying this process, it is estimated that about a million dollars in savings in term of man-hours were achieved when implementing the RBI program.