Development and application of equipment maintenance and safety integrity management system

Equipment management in process industry in China essentially belongs to the traditional breakdown maintenance pattern, and the basic inspection/maintenance decision-making is weak. Equipment inspection/maintenance tasks are mainly based on the empirical or qualitative method, and it lacks identification and classification of critical equipment, so that maintenance resources can’t be reasonably allocated. Reliability, availability and safety of equipment are difficult to control and guarantee due to the existing maintenance deficiencies, maintenance surplus, potential danger and possible accidents. In order to ensure stable production and reduce operation cost, equipment maintenance and safety integrity management system (MSI) is established in this paper, which integrates ERP, MES, RBI, RCM, SIL and PMIS together. MSI can provide dynamic risk rank data, predictive maintenance data and RAM decision-making data, through which the personnel at all levels can grasp the risk state of equipment timely and accurately and optimize maintenance schedules to support the decision-making. The result of an engineering case shows that the system can improve reliability, availability, and safety, lower failure frequency, decrease failure consequences and make full use of maintenance resources, thus achieving the reasonable and positive result.     

A History of Dry Cleaners and Sources of Solvent Releases from Dry Cleaning Equipment

Approximately 25, 000-35, 000 dry cleaning facilities currently operate in the U.S. The release of perchloroethylene and other solvents from these establishments represents a major source of soil and groundwater contamination. The manner in which dry cleaning solvents escape from dry cleaning plants is, for all practical purposes, identical for chlorinated and petroleum hydrocarbon solvents and is related to one of the following events: the catastrophic failure of a component of the dry cleaning system, the improper installation, operation or maintenance of the dry cleaning equipment or a combination of all of these causes. Acceptable customs, codes and regulations can also dictate what is authorized for operation of a dry cleaning facility in a particular community, geographic area during a particular time frame. Environmental litigation dealing with the origin of a solvent release from dry cleaners tends to focus on the design and manufacture of dry cleaning industry machines such as washers, washer extractors, tumblers, solvent filters, water separators, stills and spotting boards. A thorough analysis of the daily operations of dry cleaners often reveals that poor maintenance, failure to follow the manufacturer's instructions and the actions of the operator are the most likely causes of soil and groundwater pollution. In order to forensically evaluate the most probable origins of a solvent release and to examine issues regarding liability, a thorough understanding of the history of dry cleaning and a detailed analysis of the operation and maintenance of the dry cleaning equipment are necessary. The discovery of solvent plumes in the vicinity of dry cleaning plants may suggest that the solvent source is the dry cleaning plant; however, the presence of these plumes does not necessarily indicate that the dry cleaning equipment was defectively designed or manufactured. A thorough review of the type of equipment used over the life of the dry cleaning plant and verifiable solvent mileage records frequently indicates that operators of the plant have disposed of solvent and contaminated solids into the municipal sewer or on ground surfaces.     

乌江中上游水体营养状况底栖硅藻指示性属种的研究

首次对乌江中上游底栖硅藻和水环境因子间关系进行系统定量研究。对底栖硅藻和水环境因子进行主成分分析和相关分析。结果表明,总磷是影响底栖硅藻属种分布的第一显著因子。利用加权平均回归方法,计算出底栖硅藻属种对总磷指标响应的生态最佳值和忍耐值,提取出的Nitzschia frustulum(Kütz.)Grun.、Nitzschia fonticola Grun.、Nitzschiapalea(Kütz.)W.Sminth、Surirella angusta Kütz.Nitzschia amphibia Grun.等17种硅藻是乌江中上游河流富营养化发生的指示性属种。而Achnanthes minutissima Kütz.、Cymbella affinis、Diatoma vulagaris Bory、Navicula protracta(Grun.)Cleve等9种硅藻是乌江中上游中营养化水体的指示性属种,对较低营养水体有一定的指示意义。底栖硅藻指示性属种的提取对富营养化河流的治理和合理利用提供科学依据,为用硅藻监测、评价水质和建立河流水质监测体系提供理论基础。     

An exploration of measures of social sustainability and their application to supply chain decisions

Sustainability recognizes the interdependence of ecological, social, and economic systems – the three pillars of sustainability. The definition of corporate social responsibility (CSR) often advocates ethical behavior with respect to these systems. As more corporations commit to sustainability and CSR policies, there is increasing pressure to consider social impacts throughout the supply chain. This paper reviews metrics, indicators, and frameworks of social impacts and initiatives relative to their ability to evaluate the social sustainability of supply chains. Then, the relationship between business decision-making and social sustainability is explored with attention initially focused on directly impacting national level measures. A general strategy for considering measures of social sustainability is proposed, and a variety of indicators of CSR are described. Several of these indicators are then employed in an example to demonstrate how they may be applied to supply chain decision-making.     

城市人工湖泊引调水方案优化评估指标体系研究及应用

针对龙湖这一具有复杂边界的城市人工湖泊,建立基于无结构网格的二维水流水质耦合计算模式,并进行守恒性验证。提出适用于湖泊引调水方案优化的评估指标体系,包括反映调水流态的流场评价指标和反映水质改善效果的水体置换评价指标。利用该评估指标体系进行龙湖引调水方案的优化研究,对不同进水口位置、进水口水量分配和水下地形的调水方案评价指标进行了计算分析,得到推荐的优化方案,即：3个进水口分别布置在水湾4,水湾6和水湾10;进水口水量依次为4．5m^3／s,8．5m^3／s和3．5m^3／s;水下地形在满足龙湖湖区区域水体功能的前提下尽量采用平底或缓坡地形。     

Using data mining technology to explore causes of inaccurate reliability data and suggestions for maintenance management

Reliability data reflects equipment safety and provides a reference for setting inspection period, thereby serving as crucial information for the implementation of equipment integrity management policies. The calculation foundation of reliability data is maintenance records of adequate data quality. However, maintenance records of doubtful quality are common. Despite excluding poor quality recodes and using only the remaining maintenance recodes to calculate the reliability data, the calculated results generally lack a sufficient degree of confidence. This study applied data mining technology, including quality metrics, the association rule, and clustering, to explore the cause of low-quality maintenance data. The results revealed that the low data quality of maintenance records was due to ineffective maintenance policies, the low integrity of key system columns, nonadherence to the policy, and misunderstanding of column definitions. The proposed method successfully identified the causes of low-quality maintenance records. By incorporating the method into the function module of a CMMS, operators can equip the system with self-diagnosis, self-supervision, and continuous optimization functions.     

地下水环境监测井评估体系构建研究

为科学开展监测井评估,选择井口保护装置/井口状况、井管内径、上部井管保存状态、是否串层、井结构保存状态、井的连通性6个指标,建立监测井维护评估和监测井功能评估方法,构建地下水环境监测井评估体系。监测井维护评估最终的评估结果分为无需修复、修复和报废,用于指导地下水环境监测井维护管理,使之满足长期监测要求;监测井功能评估最终的评估结果分为监测功能良好、监测功能一般和不具有监测功能,用于判定监测井的监测功能状况,是否可以执行当前监测任务。研究可为健全地下水环境监测网络,规范开展地下水环境监测提供技术支撑。     

Marine Organisms as Indicators of Heavy Metal Pollution-Experience from 16 Years of Monitoring at a Lead Zinc Mine in Greenland

In monitoring the impact of a lead-zinc mine in Greenland, species of fish, prawns, seaweed and mussels have been analysed for cadmium, copper, lead and zinc for several years. These metals have been released to the marine environment in significant amounts from the mining operation.     

Safety issues related to the maintenance operations in a vegetable oil refinery: A case study

The present work was focused on maintenance hazards related to vegetable oil refining. An incident occurred in an Italian vegetable oil refinery was presented to evidence this safety criticality. The incident took place during a maintenance shut down, and was associated to the ignition of the solid residual in a packed column. No fatalities or injuries were reported, but the column was strongly damaged and removed from the plant. A specific experimental characterization of the solid residues accumulated in the column, sampled both from the damaged and undamaged parts of the column, was carried out in order to determine the conditions leading to unwanted combustion of the residues. At the same time, samples taken from the damaged column steelwork were subjected to metallurgical analysis aimed at the thermal and mechanical characterization of the steel, obtaining information about the incident duration and temperature reached during the combustion phenomenon. The study evidenced the need of adequate maintenance procedures and safety management in the generic framework of food industry, identified as key lessons learned.     

A study of maintenance-related major accident cases in the 21st century

This paper is based on a review of 183 detailed, major accident investigation and analysis reports related to the handling, processing and storage of hydrocarbons and hazardous chemicals over a decade from 2000 to 2011. The reports cover technical, human and organizational factors. In this paper, the Work and Accident Process (WAP) classification scheme is applied to the accident reports with the intention of investigating to what extent maintenance has been a cause of major accidents and what maintenance-related causes have been the most frequent.The main objectives are: (1) to present more current overall statistics of maintenance-related major accidents, (2) to investigate the trend of maintenance-related major accidents over time, and (3) to investigate which maintenance-related major accident causes are the most frequent, requiring the most attention in the drive for improvement.The paper presents statistical analysis and interpretation of maintenance-related major accidents’ moving averages as well as data related to the types of facility, hazardous substances, major accidents and causes. This is based on a thorough review of accident investigation reports.It is found that out of 183 major accidents in the US and Europe, maintenance was linked to 80 (44%) and that the accident trend is decreasing. The results also show that “lack of barrier maintenance” (50%), “deficient design, organization and resource management” (85%) and “deficient planning/scheduling/fault diagnosis” (69%) are the most frequent causes in terms of the active accident process, the latent accident process and the work process respectively.