A method of improving mechanical seal reliability TJ DAVID, BSc, CEng, FiMechE Floxibox Linlled, Manchester, UK. sores, Mechanical seals cane into O11 Refinery service some 40 years ago replacing packed glands on Centeifugal pumps. O12 Companies have tended to move with technology on purchases of now equipment Dut have show a aarked reluctance to up-grade existing equipment. Sone Refinery's Process Units have long operating tives, seals supplied in the 1950°s and 60°s are Stila in service with wear Componants being replaced to the original material spect fication: For the past two years we have carried out a munber of Reliobility Audite for Customers, with the aim Of ineredsing "aechanical seal life giving a resultant recuction in seiatenance costs. and improving Fe1tability and safety. ‘These surveys nave shown vast ditterences petween the soa) 1218 for similar piancs, dependent on tne Gogree of up-arading end correction of problem seals. "the majority of the ep-arading involves only ‘the replacement of ut dated face saterials within the existing seal at the next failure, with Little of no cost impact. Only approrinately 108 of seals on the worst sites need complete repiacenent. ‘Te result of up-grading could provide aaintenance savings of hundreds of thousands of pounds per ‘annum fo the industry. 2.0 mrRooucTIoN Prior to writing this paper (and st is 7 years ‘ais paper is based on my experience as a fines my last contribution), I'took tine ou £0 Radsnery Ehginecr and the last 2 years as a Zead” some tecent. papers” on Mechanical Seals. Plant Reliability Enginear with a sajor seal iat struck me moet’ was sone of the conclusions company, where I” have had the opporcunity to rg, "Seal" technology has progressed at a review "the perforeance and advise cn up-grading Phatononal rate" and "eal Lives have increase: ‘Srenetically in recent years". af 'a'nunber of locations. During the period of 20 years working in Seats have been in use for 40 yeare, about the Oil Industry at a Machinery Engineer, ay ‘the sage” tine scale a6 the gas turbine, unlike working Life seened to revolve around keeping ‘enn early ges turbines ate now museun the product in’ the punps. There. were little seo the process as 2 slew evolution, excursions and” flurries of excitenent” when one lon ew Savelopaant sowing us forward. mut of the Major machines. such as 9 covoressor oF fo\tingie change hes produced the quantum leap i turbine, "Alccupped but’ the baseload was. always Serizes. the universal panacea to'seal failures there “Mechanical Seal Leakage". It seemed to {a'atiti to be discovered. be classed. ae an inevitable event and’ not the failure of “engineers to produce a iong 1if6 Undoubtedly todays products have «mechanical component fora centrifugal pomp. significantly. iaproved and thts paper aime to Lifysteate the opportunities thet exist” to seal tatiuce analysis nas not nad the improve the performance of seals on “existing glamour of Vibration signature. Analyste and has plants. Bot had the high profile, but, ineidiously, seal fepaies eat away “at the Maintenance Sudget’ and fre the major cause of pump fa:lureNechanical seale have now be tase for over 10 years and the life the early seals" was low by today's standards, Dot compared fevourably with the packed glands they replaces. ‘Today, seal purchasers expect & seal to last a umber of years when ft aitisately failes st must do "so in a safe manner” with the loss bf toxic. or inflammable prodect minintsed ost O11 Companies now have very stringent standards on ail new equipment but seldom are these’ Standards nade” cetroupective to. existing Sith’ the nexr “the” opportunities for, improved Performance "are slow fo. be taken up. Tass Shortie 1s costing the Oil Industry in the UK hundreds of thousands of pounds per, annus Reintenance costs on mechanical seals at one Ux Refinery size runs at over £1,000,000 per year All data used in this report coltectea acing the last to years, relates to” our avn products, the sites involved had & range of Peon 35% to S04 of them. I do not believe this found the overall performance of the major Seal EGnpanies involved is very esmilar. 2. SEAL LIFE EXPEcrANCY seals? Anyone invoivea' in the subject. will Gonfire lifespan to be very variable, dependent on the sealing duty, "seal design’ selected. Guality of installation ané process operation. nore the seat design saeaity meets tne application, the seai wiil last the Life of the equipment. a¢ 20 years or nore. whereas on sone Spplications ‘mare’ an incompatible design for the duty tas buen installed, Iife cen be counted in aaye the peime factor is cost, requiring to niniaise’ “the” initial expenditore against neenance and operating costs, but also giving Consideration to reliability and. the safety Sequiresent. A. simple low cost. seal protected from the product punped by injecting an external Clean cool flugh’ can give. an acceptably. Long iife, but at a high cost for the down grading and ices, of injected product. Setter to nave paid more for a see! compatible with the product Pumped. ig ts aitticuis so give | mininun Service but I. believe any seal, that nas. an Gvorage Life of less than one gear, car be snoun tov be economically” unacceptable and should be Changed out for 2 Higher performance seal ‘you aay consider this figure to be low but 1 nave yet to finda Uk Refinery which does not have a tunper of” seals which have consistently Tess than one Year, and. T have found ‘been repaired four oF A reasonable target for new or up-graded als anovid bea minimus of 3 years. life, but Enis’ i not econoatcally viable in every case, Technically it it achievable but tho sealing Configuration would be at too high 3 cost. 2 in evaluating seal_ performance, collective Site or Plant Indices are the best tool for comperison. The one I” use is Mean ‘ine Between” Fatiure’ (cost date has Ristorieally not been available }, te. Nean Time Between Failure ‘otal Nusber of Punos Total No, of Failures in Honth = Mean Tina Between Failure (Henths) A moving average of 3 to 6 months should bee's ‘multiplying fector of typically 0.5 to 0:75, the rationale being that alt the pumps are not" running. together, ‘commonly process units having an 'A’ and 'B' pump for each service with only one running at any tise. “It” is generally Sgrted that miltiple “sterte cet into’ component Tite" sacter" than continuous running, 30" the logic of the running factor 18 not clear Using this index, what is the present achievable’ ¥.1.B.. for @ “Refinery Site? From fhe data availabie, the top quartile re “now Greeeding an NTBF of 6 Years (no sunning factor] Gna this “sovid ‘be achievable st” any. site Mere are also locations claiming 8 years. Ik Teva moving target upwards! AL the other end of the scale, there are etiil major UK siter with sn MTBF of loss. than fo yeara. and the Dest audited UK site to-date B57 Wyityears, "A “rar “east” hetsnery wnicn 1 Fecently visited has an MIBF of close to? years whereas an East European site reportea less than one year. An too often, maintenance is carried out ina vacuun and the publication of MTBF data should” allow companies to compare their performance with their peere and i hope to Sncourage thie. 3. costs ‘Te repair of mechanical sesle tnatatiea in Centrifugal puspe forms the major part of pump Guintenance "corte in the oll end. many other Process industries." Analysi¢ of data’ at a Rusber of locations hae shown that 50¢ to 708 of posp aeintenance work is" initiated by the Failure of @ mechanical seal. The cost of replacing the vorn components of a mechanical seal ia in general three t0 our Ginas'the ‘cost of the seal comoonents, aoe t2 the"“wrk “involved and” the "replacement, of secondary itaag such as bearings. A” figure quoted as @ typical cost for a seal repair of & fetion size” beck pull-out pump ls £1,200 wnica Could in "Sone instences be the sane "as a” new fate of the ert’ seal. with 800 to 2,000 pumps on a Refinery coaplez, the return’ on {nvestaent’ for improving seal iif ie seit evidentTue capital costs of a Failure Reduction Programe ‘are relatively low, "as only” a snl perentege of the installed geal will require Gomplete replacement. When it" is possible to Upgrade the existing Seal re-using the non Nearing components of the “seal, then the “ieferentisl costs are very lov. These cases Seualiy involve the up-grading of the herd face ‘one argusent against change which has been used fe" "What about the old. faces have refurbished end I noid in stock?". In general Ht ie not cost effective to install these asthe Inpravenant in seal life with the new seal face gives an overall reduction in cost’ me rationalisation of components also provides a return on investment, there are cases Shere usere have’ five rotating seal rings with Gttferent face, materiel Dut of the “sane oize held in stores. spanning the evolutionary history of mechanical seals, all could be replaced with today's standard item. A typical Refinery will old over £500,000 of mechanical seal" spares and the cost’ of ‘Ouership ia rually given as 20% per annum. Improvenents in seai_reliapiiity also reflects in the spares maximun/ainimin stocking Taveia based on sage, so” that inprovenent in Seal life further reduces spares levels ‘Tee aim of an Audit is to provide a plant with Performance appraisal of the mechanical seals appropriate, ‘recomendations for’ the up-grading of the seals fo today's. achievable standards of Performance, Up-grading should be based on an ‘ind’ improved reliability and safety, An essential pre-requisite of an audit is documented failure’ date, I have found that enory 1s poor over the tine acale involved, we Stly fenenber the things that ‘ceuse us. pain. “T have “asked” nusarous Engineera over the years ‘inet are your probleme?* and never yot received ago answer. "A seal that fails once every two gears but” requires immediate attention for Process reasons will ‘be Aighlighted, but the Stel ne “sends bie technician to” repair every. Ensee months as a routine work item ie ignored. ALL Refineries 1 have visited nave Kept fatiure data to various degrees of accuracy, the Efend to" computerised job control, is. providing an improved data bank. Sone Refineries have Jory comprenenaive computerised failure record Gystens but sil. tend to be. Gamping grounds for Gata with no feed-back programmes to implement a Failure Reduction Programe. ‘Te same coment applies to cost data, with the increased use of computers this is now Deconing "avaiianie. “but needs suitable Progreaming “to present the data in a usable ing Refinery 1 know has a computerised” record, ayaten which provides fallure data with the details of each repair in addition, each failure wes analysed by a Wachinezy Engineer and” reported even if the Conclusion “war "No changes requires, wear out with acceptable “iife'. The resulta of thelr Failure Reduction Programe (Refinery "A" is Given in Figure 1. the MBF is for’ all pomp Yatlures not only mechanical. seals, but it Goes denonstrate the scope for Inprovesent and that a Yong term commftment le required. The line for Refineries 'B' and. 'C’ are for plants oudited tea is the MBF for mechanical esis only. The faprovenent of Refinery 'C’ are primariiy the reauive of a hard face up-grading From stoliive Returning to what canbe achieved with existing. failure data, witha large pump Population a. ressonably accurate” MTBF can be Sbtained with only one month's data. A nore Securate MTBF Sa achieved by averaging over a three or six month period. This will indicate the overall performance of the site of unit and wila"sllow comparison with (t9 peers. Moan tine between ¢ailuee range under 2 years Very poor - will require extensive up-arading 2 to 4 years Poor - analysis data to decide on 4 to 6 years A good base - scope for improvenent Still provide improvenent The MTBF allows evaluation of the site performence But “does aot provide you with the Gata to initiate change. For this You require a Hinioun ‘of one year's. failure data, aagitional Years improve sccurscy but account should be Toren of any geal modifications nade in the audit perioa. From this failere data you can plot, + faiiureagainat ¥ pup population (Figure 2), the form “of this curve establishes the scope of work. A steeply” fising curve indicates « small Pereantage of problen seals whereas a 45 degree total enape of the “curve 4a infivenced by the unber of years of “data, but normally Aas a ‘Aininal effect on the “slope up to the 10% punp population. point, the "aren ‘Gt masn” anceresr’ Far curves shown’ in’ Figure 2. ere for” sctual audits, and show the range of cata collected to- Gate 208 to 708” failures associated with 108 of ‘the’ pump population. In deciding the course of action tobe taxen, the “failure ‘curve must "be coneidered 1a Conjunction with the MTBF. ‘The following hypothetical examples illustrate the appropriate approach fortwo different scenarios.