Reliability Analysis for Refinery Plants

Abstract

One of the main problems in compiling Preventive Maintenance (PM) plans for large-scale industries consisting of many subunits in the production system is the criterion used in the selection of machines and equipment to be maintained. The criteria most used are the failure frequency of each machine and equipment and the maintenance cycle time specified in the manual, as preventive maintenance is considered to be mainly time-based. In some cases, Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) technique is applied in the selection of machines and equipment by considering individual and independent machines in the subsystems. The overall mechanisms of the machines and equipment were not considered, which may affect the production capacity. Therefore, this research applies reliability engineering techniques to find the overall reliability of machines and equipment in the production system of oil refinery models and determine the machine in the subsystem that affects that overall reliability. This in turn causes optimal preventive maintenance planning for machines and equipment in order to achieve the maximum efficiency for the oil refinery process. This research begins by studying the procedures of oil refinery models, then creating a reliability block diagram of the subsystems to find the reliability of the machines and equipment within each subsystem. Afterwards, the overall reliability of the production system will be determined, which leads to arranging the reliability of machines and equipment in the subsystems in ascending order. This develops into the preventive maintenance planning process so that the refinery process achieves its maximum efficiency.