Inspection

The rules and regulations applying to U.S states, cities and Canadian provinces and territories concerning piping, pressure vessel and storage tank inspection can be described as "a coat of many colors," and are meant to represent continuous improvement over time. This table provides some information that will hopefully be useful to you regarding the level of acceptance of API 510 by the state, city, province and territorial authorities.

Joint integrity programs (JIP) should be an integral part of every refinery, petrochemical, production, or other industrial-complex facility operations.

New inline inspections and integrity management systems allow operators to understand the complexities and economics of terminals’ and station’s complex aging pipeline infrastructure.

Periodically, oil refinery and petrochemical plant operating companies conduct complex turnarounds for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to, scheduled maintenance, facility upgrades, and code compliance. In this series of articles published in Inspectioneering Journal, I will begin by detailing a roadmap for pre-turnaround inspection planning activities.

UAS (Unmanned Arial System) drone technology has numerous applications, including anything at elevated heights or where human access and/or occupancy are prohibited, or in the case of confined spaces, limited.

Technicians inspecting oil & gas installations and petrochemical plants employ a wide variety of nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques. A new technology has recently been developed that utilizes a real-time portable imaging device which has distinct advantages in finding internal corrosion.

Over recent years large strides have been made in application, development, and utilization of Digital Detector Arrays (DDAs) in field radiography environments (an application previously limited to film and computed radiography [CR] techniques).

Composite repair systems can be a great option for owner/ operators to extend the life of their assets without disrupting operations.

Maintaining the mechanical integrity of above ground storage tanks (AST’s) is the focal point of tank inspection programs. Performing internal inspections is an integral part of a tank integrity program, however, deciding when to take a tank out of service to perform an internal inspection is not an easy determination to make.

This article is the fifth of a series of articles that will focus on one critical sub process within a PEIP that is key in managing the integrity of process piping; Thickness Monitoring Programs for Internal Corrosion.

AET is a powerful, non-intrusive inspection technique to verify the structural integrity of pressure vessels, spheres, high-temperature reactors and piping, coke drums, above-ground storage tanks, cryogenic storage tanks, and more.

This post concludes the Top 7 reasons why some operating sites "just don’t get it." Reference the previous post for here and here. And for examples of all of the management systems for a sustainable PEI program of excellence, read my article, "The 101 Essential Elements of Pressure Equipment Integrity Management for the Hydrocarbon Process Industry"

Flint Hills Resources, LLC (http://www.fhr.com/) operates oil refineries and chemical plants across North America. Our Port Arthur, TX chemical plant is hiring an Inspector to join their Mechanical Integrity team. Our chemical plant is poised for extensive growth due to expansions on site.

This blog post continues our discussion from the previous posts on scalable accuracy. We started with a post outlining the steps prior to using scalable accuracy. Then we walked through the scalable accuracy approach to Fixed Equipment LCM. While I normally start with RBI when discussing scalable accuracy, it will be easier to use an example of Fitness for Service as our starting point.

Continuing from last week’s blog, I want to go in depth into scalable accuracy for fixed equipment lifecycle management. In this post, I want to outline the scalable accuracy approach to fixed equipment lifecycle management.

At PinnacleAIS, we often get requests for a Senior API Inspector. But what does that mean exactly? What qualifications are required? Is there a test or a certification that provides the end user with assurance they are getting a higher caliber inspector or inspection service? Often there are different ideas of what comprises a "Senior" Inspector.

Finding experienced, qualified staff for your projects can be a daunting task. Rather than doing the hard work yourself, consider using a technical staffing service (TSS) that can make the process much more efficient.