Reynolds Wrap Up: Do You Know What Type of Damage Mechanisms May Be Your Highest Risk?

Introduction

Of the nearly 70 damage mechanisms listed in the latest edition of API RP 571, do you know which ones may embody the highest FEMI risk at your operating site? I would venture to say it might very well be the ones that are highly localized in nature and, therefore, the hardest to find without an excellent understanding of the threat, effective inspection procedures, detailed inspection planning, and knowledgeable personnel guiding the effort to find localized damage mechanisms (DMs) and corrosion [1]. In this article, I will use localized DMs and localized corrosion interchangeably to refer to a wide variety of localized DMs in API RP 571 [7].

Over the last 54 years of my experience in the petrochemical and refining industry, I have been involved in and/or read about a lot of major FEMI failure investigations, including numerous ones that involved large losses of primary containment (LOPC). Many of them involved damage mechanisms that can be highly localized and difficult to find such as those identified in a previous article [5]. I clearly remember several incidents off the top of my head:

• One is where the inspector knew that the damage he was looking for might be...