Track 3 Session 8

1:00 to 2:00 p.m. Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Integration of Various Tools into a Reliability Assessment Process for Evaluating Power Plant Equipment

There has not been a good single tool for predicting reliability of equipment in process industries, particularly in the power industry. As funds are dwindling and competition is increasing between utilities, the utilities are looking for ways to improve the reliability of their equipment. Unfortunately, engineers and managers use many different methods and tools to develop their reliability projections and budgets. Sigma Energy Solutions, Inc. has developed a process for performing reliability assessments, particularly on power plant equipment, by integrating various software tools. Sigma has modeled the units in Weibull++® using GADS event history along with CMMS data to predict the probability of equipment failures. This failure data is then fed into the BlockSim® model to generate reliability of the system and components. In addition, Sigma has performed throughput analysis to predict "loadability" and bottlenecks.

Key Words: Process, Tools, Standardization, Consistency, Process Industry, Power Plant Equipment, FMECA, Reliability Assessment, Reliability, Probability of Failures, Event Data Analysis

S. Rao Palakodeti and Christopher Barella

Sigma Energy Solutions, Inc.

Melville, New York