Plant Shut Down - The time to explore
During my first plant shutdown, i learned lots of new things. My learning curve suddenly increased. My understanding on this plant became better and better.
I know some other people have their own experiences dealing with this shut down. Well, during this time, all of us, technician, fitters, maintenance people, production people, operators, contract worker/helpers will combine and work together to repair/clean/rectify any problems. Some leaked valves will be replaced. Some identified cracking pipes will be either be replaced or welded. Maybe some heat exchanger need some RTD or temperature sensor to be installed upstream and downstream. One or two heat exchangers that don't have it's substitute might also be serviced. The list continues of shut down jobs continues...too long to list it here....
During this period, i took advantage of getting inside some of the vessels. I traveled deep inside all vessels that was possible for me to enter. It was hot and dark....need some fan ventilation to help us inhail. We checked the condition inside the pack column, deodoriser etc. It's dirty and oily and slippery. Imagine the temperature inside this vessel when it is in operation - 260 Celcius or more....uhhh that's pretty hot inside.
Well, the shutdown is some activity which is out of our daily routine job that improve our comprehension of the plant processes. What do you think?
posted by Kipas Repair JB @ 9:02 PM,
2 Comments:
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At Tuesday, October 16, 2007,
said...
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How long did it actually take for the process to completely stop once the 'off button' was pushed?
What type of plant was it? (just out of interest!) -
At Thursday, October 18, 2007,
Kipas Repair JB said...
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Hi,
It depends on the type of the plant. If the plant is big the time to stop will be longer. If the temperature in the plant is very high, it will be longer to stop the plant. For example, it take 24 hours to stop and cool down down a 1500 MT capacity plant with a having a temperature up to 270oC. By the way, it only took 5 hours to stop a plant with 400MT capacity that have a temperature up to 210oC.
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