Equipment Breakdown Research Articles

A reduced order model for triethylene glycol natural gas dehydration system

In natural gas processing plants, glycol dehydration is commonly used to remove water from the gas streams, to avoid pipeline blockage and equipment breakdown due to hydrates formation. This paper proposed a reduced order model developed based on integrated simulation-optimization approach for the glycol dehydration system, with the aim to minimize its operating cost while satisfying pipeline quality specifications. Steady-state process simulation software was used to identify important operating parameters for the glycol dehydration process; these include reboiler temperature and flow ratio of the regeneration column, and solvent flowrate. The identified parameters are built into a non-linear programming model, which was developed as a reduced order model for ease of implementation in the plant. The studied parameters are reboiler duties, hot oil, condenser, and pump, as well as TEG make-up flow rate and CO2 equivalent (CO2-eq) emissions. The Pareto Front is developed to identify the minimum operating cost at different levels of water dew point specification. The work has resulted in the annual savings of more than 34.6%.

Limitations in Current Construction Practices of Public Sector Building Projects in Sindh

Undivided attention is being driven by construction productivity in today’s era. The main and the foremost concern of any organization is its construction productivity. The discovery of factors impacting construction productivity has been the subject of much research. For a very long time, research has sought to identify the key elements influencing building productivity in various nations. Continuous work in this approach has led academics to identify a wide range of factors. While the subject of this paper is however has been limited to Sindh province of Pakistan only. The construction industry of Pakistan is swelling with each passing day thus construction productivity is of the major concern. This paper aims at exposing the key weakness in current construction practices being employed in various building projects of Sindh. For this purpose, 135 questionnaires, after a rich literature survey, were distributed among the industry experts and the obtained results were analyzed and then ranked in Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS). It was revealed through the results that 10 factors chiefly influence the construction productivity which are shortage of unskilled labor, payment delay, less salary, insufficient modern tools, delay in delivery of material at site, material shortage and quality, labor absenteeism, equipment breakdown, experience of contractor and construction technology. At the end of the study, it is recommended that a framework maybe developed based upon the factors given above to improve the construction productivity of the building projects of Sindh.

РОЗРОБКА ЕЛЕКТРОННОГО БЛОКУ ПІДСИСТЕМИ ІДЕНТИФІКАЦІЇ МЕТАЛЕВИХ ВКЛЮЧЕНЬ У СИРОВИНІ НА КОНВЕЄРНІЙ СТРІЧЦІ З АВТОМАТИЧНИМ ВИЗНАЧЕННЯМ ЇХ КООРДИНАТ

Purpose. Ensuring reliability and efficiency manufacturing ceramic products technological process by integrating into it the subsystem for identifying metal inclusions in raw materials with automatic determination of their coordinates and dimensions for their further extraction. Methodology. Methods of circuit engineering, basics of system theory and automatic control, methods of electromagnetic circuits and digital signal processing are used, a comprehensive approach to the construction of a control system, mathematical methods of operations research are used as well. Results. The article provides a critical analysis of existing modern solutions for metal inclusions identification in loose raw materials for ceramic products manufacture during their movement on a conveyor belt. It was established that the presence of metal inclusions in raw materials inevitably leads to failures with subsequent breakdowns of technological equipment. The electronic unit for measuring and processing the signals from the receiving coils has been developed. The electronic unit for generating the excitation signal in the radiating coils has been carried out. Based on the proposed concept, the subsystem for detecting metal inclusions has been created, which is easily scaled to the width of the conveyor belt by selecting the number of measuring channels. The algorithm of signal processing for the receiving coils unit has been worked out, which allows implementing the synchronous signals forming, measurement, processing, and presentation of results. Scientific novelty. The identification subsystem structure of metal inclusions has been proposed, which is implemented on the parallax method of determining the position of the metal inclusion between the coils. Practical significance. The development and integration of the identification subsystem of metal inclusions into the structure of the automated control system of the raw material preparation process has been carried out, which includes the development of hardware and algorithmic support. As result of testing the identification subsystem of metal inclusions on a laboratory installation of conveyor line, it is possible to detect 89.8% ones of metal inclusions.

Scheduling and Predictive Maintenance for Smart Toilet

Modern society needs bathrooms. Poor sanitation is caused by worn-out appliances and expensive cleaning. The technique also requires an inexpensive, dependable sensor. This study had three goals. Creating an IoT administration platform is the main goal. Literature evaluations assess the merits and downsides of existing systems. Second, we suggest predictive maintenance to assist predict bathroom equipment breakdowns. Finally, a scheduling algorithm was used to determine how many janitors to hire. We’ll measure the model’s effectiveness and make future recommendations. Infrared, temperature and humidity sensors create an IoT bathroom. Sensors have been studied to understand how to adapt them to the hygienic and private toilet environment. Sensor accuracy and cost-effectiveness could be enhanced with more development and testing. The Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model accurately predicts time series lags, making it a good candidate for predictive maintenance. Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) is good in time series predictions, therefore it’s fair to compare the two. We use the ARIMA model to handle Remaining Useful Life (RUL) prediction techniques by altering Moving Average (MA) and Auto-Regressive (AR). A genetic algorithm is used to create a janitorial cleaning schedule. The genetic algorithm was proposed to schedule cleaning workers. This approach improves the genetic algorithm by studying soft and hard scheduling restrictions. The Greedy algorithm is used to compare. Experimental evaluations reveal that the suggested model ARIGA meets both goals.

실시간 절삭 계수 식별 기반의 공구 마모 모니터링 시스템

Among the monitoring technologies in the metal-cutting process, tool wear is the most critical monitoring factor in real machining sites. Extensive studies have been conducted to monitor equipment breakdown in real-time. For example, tool wear prediction studies using cutting force signals and deducting force coefficient values from the cutting process. However, due to many limitations, those wearable monitoring technologies have not been directly adopted in the field. This paper proposes a novel tool wear predictor using the cutting force coefficient with various cutting tools, and its validity evaluates through cutting tests. Tool wear prediction from the cutting force coefficient should conduct in real-time for adoption in real machining sites. Therefore, a real-time calculation algorithm of the cutting force coefficient and a tool wear estimation method proposes, and they compare with actual tool wear in cutting experiments for validation. Validation cutting tests are conducted with carbon steel and titanium, the most commonly used materials in real cutting sites. In future work, validation will be conducted with different materials and cutting tools, considering the application in real machining sites.

Determination of the form of loss the freight cars stability taking into account the gap in the rail track

Derailments of freight cars occur for various reasons: breakdown of equipment or individual parts; maintenance deviations in the track superstructure; incorrect order of passing and making-up trains; violation of normal dynamic conditions, which occurs due to hunting and unfavorable traffic conditions on a curved track section. In order to avoid derailments and ensure a stability coefficient, the restrictions expressed using certain indicators are set. These indicators determine the conditions for lifting the wheel above the rail head, overturning the rail and widening the railway track. One of the most widely used restrictions is the restriction expressed in terms of the ratio of the lateral force acting on the wheel to the vertical force.Rolling stock derailment when the wheel flange is rolled onto the rail head, as a rule, is facilitated by longitudinal compressive forces.The presence of longitudinal forces in the train results in unloading the wheels moving along the outer rail line, and overloading the wheels moving along the inner rail line.The stability loss of freight cars as part of a train should be divided into two stages: stability loss of the body on suspension springs and the stability loss of the wheel set, which results directly in the derailment.
 The work is aimed to study the influence of longitudinal quasi-static compressive forces arising during stationary modes of train movement on the form of freight cars’ instability. The relevance of this study relates to the need to control the longitudinal forces arising during the train movement, taking into account the increase in speeds, masses and lengths of trains, especially freight trains, by in the locomotives power increase. The use of the above methodology will improve the stability of freight rolling stock, justify the cause of derailment, as well as develop and put into practice technical measures to prevent the lift of the carriages, widening and shear of the track.

Комплексная цифровизация, реализуемая при освоении запасов Гремячинского месторождения калийно-магниевых солей

The paper reviews the main trends in digitalization of the production processes implemented during the development of the Gremyachinskoe potassium-magnesium salt deposit. The main objective of the digital projects is to maintain competitiveness in the current market conditions. When implementing the integrated digital transformation project, the EuroChem-VolgaKaliy created a clear system of criteria to control the efficiency of the business processes and intriduced instrumental control over the actual duration of the technological cycle. Comparing more complete information on personnel with production metrics data creates objective ratings of face teams and foremen, which makes it possible to reduce production cycle time and increase average daily production volumes by 26%. An important area for further implementation of the project will be upgrading the IT-infrastructure, robotization of the office tasks, e.g. automatic generation of production requests, transfer of messages between the related divisions with no manual entry of information. After the information array is formed, it is planned to introduce the dependency analysis of production indicators with definition of equipment breakdown parameters. This will help to reduce the total number of downtime cases and increase the productivity of the mine as a whole, and will ensure a significant reduction in duration of unscheduled emergency repairs. A promising trend in activities of the Gremyachinskoe mining-and-processing integrated works is application of artificial intelligence in planning of mining operations. In order to solve these tasks it is envisaged to create 3D models, to simulate various methods and technologies of mining salt formations, to determine the design parameters of the mining method with account of the actual morphology and thixotropy of the formations.

Stability of Selected Biochemical Analytes in Serum Stored at Room Temperature for 24 Hours at Kericho County Referral Hospital, Kenya

Accurate and reliable medical laboratory test results are essential for correct patient diagnosis and management. This is however influenced by many preanalytical, analytical, and post-analytical factors. A general problem faced by most clinical laboratories is the inability to timely process all blood samples received due to overwhelming workload, reagents stock-outs, and equipment breakdown, necessitating storage which predisposes analytes to deterioration. To ensure accurate results from stored samples, the determination of the stability of the analytes under various environmental conditions and storage periods is important in informing acceptable sample handling and storage. This study was designed to experimentally observe changes and evaluate the stability of eleven biochemical analytes in serum samples from 20 randomly sampled healthy volunteers stored at room temperature over 24 hours at Kericho County Referral Hospital laboratory. 10mls of venous blood was drawn from each volunteer, serum was separated and five aliquot sets were prepared. Analysis was done on a set immediately, at 2, 4, 8, and 24 hours, to determine the concentration of the selected analytes on Human Star 100 chemistry analyser. Student pair T-test and Wilcoxon rank were used to analyse the data. Chloride, Creatinine, Glucose, Potassium, Sodium, Urea, Alkaline Phosphatase, Alanine Amino Transferase and Aspartate Amino Transferase registered stability up to 24 hours, with mean percentage differences less the respective calculated reference change value of 4.54, 35.97, 13.14, 10.89, 2.16, 32.15, 16.48, 42.25 and 42.52. Direct and total bilirubin showed stability only up to 2 and 4 hours, respectively, with mean percentage differences of -2.6 and 1.07 against respective calculated reference change values of 1.14 and 0.675 in the subsequent analysis. This study recommends immediate analysis of serum for total and direct bilirubin, while electrolytes, enzymatic analytes and other metabolic waste and substrates can be analysed within 24 hours without extra storage precautions. If testing is delayed, then effective storage including a dark room, refrigeration, or freezing, should be applied to maintain analytes stability for reliable results.

A Risk-Based Analysis Approach to Sustainable Construction by Environmental Impacts

Sustainable construction is a comprehensive process of balancing the natural and built environment by applying sustainable development concepts. The golden triangle in the construction of time, cost, and quality should also assess risks from a sustainable perspective and investigate the environmental dimensions of the project. However, proper risk assessment for green sustainability is challenging, resulting in project management conducted under uncertain conditions. This study proposes a procedure based on Monte Carlo Simulations to improve the assessment of critical risk factors associated with construction activities. The AHP method was applied to rank environmental impact indicators, and the EMV approach was used to calculate the effects of the expected outcomes. The current study shows that air, water, and land pollution, water consumption, and solid waste are the most critical indicators. The results indicate that the equipment breakdown significantly impacted the duration of (and increase in) environmental issues. The evidence suggests that attention should be paid to sustainability risk factors during construction activities, e.g., the unavailability of materials had the most significant impact on the cost of the construction phase. The results suggest that the inadequate control of sustainability risk factors can lead to poor performance and tough decisions in a construction project.

Environmental Aspects of the State of African Coastal Territories

To preserve the ecological balance and health of the population of the African continent, it is necessary to maintain the cleanliness of the surrounding rivers, lakes and ocean coasts. Oil production, transportation of oil and petroleum products inevitably lead to pollution of sea waters due to accidents on tankers, equipment breakdowns, and fires. Oceanic coasts are of great importance for the development of the tourism industry, which plays a significant role in the national economies of African countries. However, many coastal areas are contaminated with industrial and household waste, oil refining waste and sewage. As a result of the growth of cities, the increase in the number of urban residents and the development of industry, a huge number of substances that do not decompose naturally is discharged into water sources. Currently, domestic sewage in most coastal cities does not meet modern sanitary requirements, since the repair of old and the laying of new sewage treatment plants require large financial investments. In the interests of nature and human health, a number of international instruments has been adopted prohibiting the import of hazardous and radioactive waste, as well as the dumping or incineration of hazardous waste in the oceans and inland waters on the African continent. In some African countries, periodic clean-up activities are carried out on ocean and river coasts, but they are ad hoc and do not have a decisive impact on the state of contaminated areas. Experts of international environmental organizations have proposed a set of measures for the conservation and rational use of water resources: construction of wastewater treatment plants; mandatory environmental assessment of all major water management projects; development of measures to eliminate possible damage; control of new industrial installations and industrial waste disposal; design and operation of landfills based on reliable hydrogeological information and environmental expertise. However, these regulations are often violated, and solving the problem of coastal water pollution remains a distant prospect.

Development of a Methodology for the Quality Management of Duplex Stainless Steels.

The use of traditional materials leads to failures and breakdowns of expensive equipment, so advanced materials are needed that can provide reliable and durable solutions. The ability to control the quality of duplex stainless steels (DSSs) can greatly help with the development of new compositions or choosing existing DSSs. In this case, it is necessary to consider the final consumer properties—corrosion resistance and mechanical properties, which depend on the phase composition, contamination with non-metallic inclusions (NMIs), and the presence of undesirable secondary phases. In this research, specimens of cast DSSs of different grades, produced at laboratory and industrial scales, were studied. A technique for quantifying the microstructure of DSSs was developed. A thermodynamic database was chosen that adequately describes the processes of phase formation in DSSs. The effects of heat treatment on the microstructure and corrosion properties of cast DSSs were studied. The effects of the structural state on the changes in consumer properties of the final product are shown. It is shown that using various deoxidation technologies, it is possible to obtain both NMIs that are dangerous in terms of corrosive activity and ones that are relatively safe.

Study of the risk assessment quality dependence on the ships accidents analysis

Safety is undoubtedly a qualitative basis for the efficient functioning of maritime transport. Particularly important is safety of shipping, freight and passenger transportation. The impetuous growth of ship quantity, increase of their movement along the sea ways as well as the factors of external environment influence underline the necessity to consider the problem of shipping safety as the most priority and actual one in the focus of consideration of the current state and tendencies of the shipping development. As the statistics shows, the main reason of marine accidents are breakdown, damages or failure of engines and equipment. They account for over a third of all recorded cases over the past ten years. The same reason has led in recent years to the most expensive insurance payments, amounting to impressive sums. This explains why risk assessment as a structured process of analysing the consequences and probabilities of dangerous situations is an effective tool for achieving safety goals. The aim of this research is to study the peculiarities of risk assessment process and compare the quality of execution of this process with the accident rate of the world trading fleet. The causes of accident consequences have been systematized, pointing to the fact that seafarers could have prevented most accidents if they had paid proper attention to conducting a risk assessment of the operation, especially the impact of certain elements of the human factor.

Analisis Aktivitas Bongkar Muat Kapal Untuk Eliminasi Pemborosan di PT. Pelayaran Timur Asri Laut

PT. Pelayaran Timur Asri Laut is the loading and unloading service company of various types of commodities. In the service process, operational performance is considered not optimal or there is waste which indirectly has an impact on the longer the berthing time of the ship, causing port congestion. The implementation of this study involves various activities such as identifying waste, analyzing the causes of waste occurring using the Lean Six Sigma method. The purpose is to analyze ship loading and unloading by identifying waste, analyzing the causes of waste and the factors causing demurrage in PT. Sea East Voyage. The results showed that the factors causing the highest waste category demurrage occurred in the Internal Equipment Breakdown, then using a fishbone diagram and FMEA for the factors causing of the problem to get the highest RPN value. The 5 highest causes of the RPN value are the Operator not in accordance with the SOP, short lifetime, monitoring has not been measured in real terms, the quality of spare parts is not good and the procurement of spare parts is not coordinated.

Nonlinear Integrated Fuzzy Modeling to Predict Dynamic Occupant Environment Comfort for Optimized Sustainability

In the ever-evolving vibrant landscape of our times, it is crucial that a peaceful environment is ensured taking into account all the likely ecological parameters along with humidity and temperature while conserving energy. Thus, besides mechanical and electric control systems, it has become vital to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) is assimilated and deployed into the systems so as to raise the well-being of the environment. By disseminating intelligence across the building by utilizing the new internet of things (IoT) technology, along with control formats, local open standard data, AI algorithms, and cloud-based predictive analytics, the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) mechanism renders the capability to acclimatize to use patterns, alterations in use patterns, and equipment breakdown. By tracing human activity coupled with analysis of noise, energy, and temperature in the building, its occupants and facility managers can obtain vital insights for planning, optimum use of space, and behavioral changes, in turn ensuring more content and safer inhabitants and considerably more efficient structures. Moreover, fuzzy modeling shows its applicability factor with the execution of human rationale and reasoning with if-then rules as attained from the system’s input-output info for model setup and training. Additionally, it presents advantages pertaining to predictive functions for tackling nonlinearity and uncertainty as well as studying the capability of the models recommended. Thus, the multi-dimensional model recommended in this study outlines a system architecture as an implementation methodology and how it harmonizes prevailing systems while offering comprehensive knowledge to HVAC systems for the accomplishment of lower energy consumption and inhabitant safety and well-being on the basis of the fuzzy modeling. With tolerance for CO2 discharges moving towards zero, the recommended multi-dimensional model provides substantial advantages for the HVAC sector for meeting the essential objectives while taking into account enhanced sustainability in vibrant and nonlinear environments for enhancing the accuracy and fairness of the assessment outcomes.

Listeria prevention

<i>Listeria</i> prevention

Industrial monitoring and control using LoRa communication

Monitoring and controlling industrial machinery is one of the best methods to prevent equipment breakdown. Industrial machines normally break down when the voltage or current goes low or high. With Industrial monitoring, we can ensure that the access is controlled, and the products are of higher quality. With this method, we can control access, improve productivity, and ensure high-quality results when manufacturing industrial products. In today's technological era, remote monitoring and control have become commonplace in industries using connectivity techniques such as ZigBee, RF,and Infrared. Due to their slow communication speeds, long distances, and weak data security, these wireless communication techniques are generally limited to simple applications. Additionally, they are easily affected by noise and bad weather conditions, such as snow, fog, and rain the present project proposes to use LoRa (long-range) technology to implement a new solution for the traditional monitoring and control of industrial applications using high-quality communication and high security.

On-Line Diagnostics of Electrolytic Capacitors in Fault-Tolerant LED Lighting Systems

As technology advances, the utilization of lighting systems based on light-emitting diode (LED) technology is becoming increasingly essential, given its benefits in terms of efficiency, reliability, and lifespan. Unfortunately, the power electronic components required to drive LEDs are unable to compete with LED devices in terms of lifetime. Aluminum electrolytic capacitor (AEC) failures represent the root cause of power electronic equipment breakdown, mainly through both aging and temperature effects. This highlights the importance of designing robust power converter architectures and control methods that allow the evaluation of the condition of electrolytic capacitors while maintaining the performance of converter controllers, even in the presence of capacitor failure. On this basis, this work proposes a novel condition-monitoring system for the diagnosis of capacitor faults on a fault-tolerant LED driver, which is able to deal with the specific architecture and low ratings of the most recent LED lighting systems. The fault-detection task applies the short time least square Prony’s (STLSP) approach to perform an online estimation of the ESR and C parameters, allowing the continuous evaluation of the electrolytic capacitor’s condition and, as a result, the prevention of total system failure. With regard to capacitor failure, the experimental results suggest that the condition-monitoring task is extremely effective, even when considering a limited number of data samples.

Assessment on cold chain management system in selected blocks of Purulia district, West Bengal, India

Background: The study was done to assess the status of cold chain point, vaccine storage practice and practice of health workers about immunization activities at cold chain points. The aim was to evaluate the cold chain system in relation to infrastructure, manpower and maintenance of equipment in selected blocks of Purulia district.Methods:It was a cross sectional descriptive study, done at randomly selected sites where vaccines were stored and outreach sessions where immunization services were provided. Five cold chain points were included in the study. Fully structured standardized checklists and questionnaire had been used to collect the data.Results: Only 40% cold chain point (CCP) reported breakdown of cold chain equipment (CCE) in last one year. Ice lined refrigerator (ILR) and deep freezer (DF) were properly placed in 75% of the CCP. All the CCP have displayed contingency plans and latest standard job aids. Vaccines and ice packs were correctly placed. ILR and DF were connected to functional voltage stabilizer. A functional thermometer was placed inside every ILR and DF and twice daily recording of temperature was found in all the CCPs. Record of vaccine wastage was found only in 40% CCPs. CCPs have adequate space for conditioning. No frozen vaccine and vaccine vial beyond expiry date were found in any of the CCPs. All CC handlers had satisfactory knowledge about cold chain management.Conclusions:This study was an effort to assess the status of cold chain points in Purulia district, West Bengal. Overall result was satisfactory, could have been maintained and further improve in future by good supportive supervision practice as a key measure in improvement of cold chain system.

DISADVANTAGES OF THE CORROSION PROCESS AND METHODS OF COMBATING CORROSION

The article provides a brief analysis of the disadvantages of the corrosion process and methods of combating corrosion. Corrosion protection of metal-containing equipment is one of the most pressing issues in today's rapidly evolving global and local environment. This problem is mainly due to the fact that steel equipment and pipelines are exposed to atmospheric corrosion during oil and gas production, transportation and refining, which is the basis of the oil sector. Corrosion is the destruction of metals and their alloys by the environment. According to the mechanism of the decomposition process, chemical and electrochemical types of corrosion are distinguished. The breakdown of a metal or alloy in contact with an electrolyte or other metal in an aqueous medium is called electrochemical corrosion. Electrochemical corrosion can occur in acidic, alkaline and neutral environments. An example of this type of corrosion is the corrosion of iron in contact with copper in an acidic environment. Atmospheric corrosion can be cited as one of the factors contributing to the increase in corrosion processes. Therefore, atmospheric corrosion remains the main object of research for professionals working in this field. Atmospheric corrosion results in the breakdown of equipment in various industries, the release of large amounts of waste into the environment, and further pollution of the environment, which is negatively affected by anthropogenic activities. Keywords: cathode protection, protector protection, anode protection, corrosion protection, electrochemical corrosion, negative effects of corrosion.

A virtual sensor for backlash in robotic manipulators

Gear backlash is a quite serious problem in industrial robots, it causes vibrations and impairs the robot positioning accuracy. Backlash estimation allows targeted maintenance interventions, preserving robot performances and avoiding unforeseen equipment breakdowns. However, a direct measure of the backlash is hard to obtain, and dedicated auxiliary sensors are required for the measurement. This paper presents a method for estimating backlash in robotic joints that does not require the installation of extra devices. It only relies on data gathered from the motor encoder, which is always present in a robotic joint. The approach is based on the observation of a characteristic vibration pattern arising on the motor speed signal when backlash affects the joint transmission. By looking at the amplitude of this vibration some information about the entity of the backlash in the joint is gathered. Experimental results on simulated data are reported in the study to show the robustness of the method, also with respect of noise. Furthermore, tests on real-world data, gathered from robots installed in a production plant, demonstrate the efficacy of the technique. The approach is cost-effective, fast, and easily automatable, therefore convenient for the industrial world.