FRAMEWORK FOR RELIABILITY, MAINTAINABILITY AND AVAILABILITY ANALYSIS OF GAS PROCESSING SYSTEM DURING OPERATION PHASE

• Main Author: HUSSIN, HILMI BIN HUSSIN
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/6628/1/2013%20PhD%20-%20Framework%20for%20Reliability%2C%20Maintainability%20and%20Avaibility%20Analysis%20of%20Gas%20Processing%20S.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/6628/

In facing many operation challenges such as increased expectation in bottom line performances and escalating overhead costs, petrochemical plants nowadays need to continually strive for higher reliability and availability by means of effective improvement tools. Reliability, maintainability and availability (RAM) analysis has been recognised as one of the strategic tools to improve plant's reliability at operation phase. Nevertheless, the application of RAM among industrial practitioners is still limited generally due to the impracticality and complexity of existing approaches. Hence, it is important to enhance the approaches so that they can be practically applied by companies to assist them in achieving their operational goals. The objectives of this research are to develop frameworks for applying reliability, maintainability and availability analysis of gas processing system at operation phase to improve system operational and maintenance performances. In addition, the study focuses on ways to apply existing statistical approach and incorporate inputs from field experts for prediction of reliability related measures. Furthermore, it explores and highlights major issues involved in implementing RAM analysis in oil and gas industry and offers viable solutions. In this study, systematic analysis on each RAM components are proposed and their roles as strategic improvement and decision making tools are discussed and demonstrated using case studies of two plant systems. In reliability and maintainability (R&M) analysis, two main steps; exploratory and inferential are proposed. Tools such as Pareto, trend plot and hazard functions; Kaplan Meier (KM) and proportional hazard model (PHM), are used in exploratory phase to identify critical elements to system's R&M performances. In inferential analysis, a systematic methodology is presented to assess R&M related measures.