An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So goes the maxim and it applies very well to the care and inspection programs of industrial combustion equipment in the petrochemical industry.
Flare Preventive Maintenance Program
From the flare tips at the extreme top of the stack all the way down to the guy wires holding it to the ground every inch of a flare stack is under the most intense of conditions. Acute heat exposure to wind and rain it is in operation both day and night and the petrochemical flare is subject to plenty of wear and tear. Providing the flare with a good preventive maintenance program can save precious time and a whole lot of money.
Flares & Stacks’ efficient flare stack preventive maintenance program for industrial combustion equipment includes the following:
- Regular flare inspections on a pre-established schedule
- Guy wire inspections on a pre-established schedule
- A thorough report on observations should be presented with the results of both flare inspection and guy wire inspection findings
- A plan for future turnarounds
But better yet, the flare failure preventive maintenance program should ideally include another critical prevention measure: flare failure preparedness.
Flares & Stacks Raises the Bar Further:
Flare Failure Preparedness Program
Flare failure preparedness goes the following step in flare maintenance. Not merely the “check it then forget” it typical approach to maintenance programs, Flares & Stacks’ Flare Failure Preparedness is the plan of anticipating unscheduled failure events and to be prepared for sudden component breakage. It means our clients can depend that we keep in stock parts they might possibly need in a failure event, and that Flares and Stacks has an action plan to address a flare repair event the very moment a component goes down. This process has three steps to it:
- It commences with a full inspection of the flare stack and components
- The flare stack team maintains in stock all the determined at-risk parts found as a result of the inspection of the plant’s flare system
- When a part fails there is in place a pre-planned response for replacing the part quickly.
The consequence is significantly reduced ‘down’ time, since the part is kept on hand and Flares & Stacks’ team of experts is knowledgeable of the potential for the event and are familiar with the flare system. What once took days now can be replaced or repaired in a matter of hours. Which actually will also result in significant monetary savings for the petroleum plant, and that is always good.
