In 2023, a major North Sea upstream oil and gas operator with a facility three years into operation was experiencing repeated premature pump mechanical seal failures.
Whilst these failures posed no immediate risk to personnel, they were causing costly financial and operational losses.
In response, Maintenance and Reliability Solutions reliability engineers embedded within the client’s operations team were commissioned to complete a study of 40 production related pumps of varying types to identify seal failure root causes and provide recommendations to eliminate the failures.
To address the pump mechanical seal failures, the reliability engineers used a trusted Root Cause Analysis review process; evaluating pump work order data, operational procedures, and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) input to systemically identify the common factors contributing to the failures across the different pumps and their varied operational conditions.
This comprehensive process led to 12 summarized findings:
- Variance in seal installation methods used by the offshore maintenance team.
- Uncertainty within the offshore maintenance team surrounding acceptable seal leakage rates.
- Operating pumps away from their ‘best efficiency’ point was likely contributing to seal failures.
- Inconsistent monitoring of seal system operating parameters.
- Seal failures caused by incomplete venting during system startups.
- Re-filling the central seal system tank initiated contamination of the barrier fluid.
- Blockages due to unnecessary filter installations on seal system PCVs.
- Low confidence in spare mechanical seal stock and MRP settings.
- Seal system maintenance plans are missing important tasks.
- Blockages caused by incorrect specification filters installed on the central seal system.
- Seal system vendor was not present during commissioning and had never been on site.
- Alternative specialist identified redundant seal design aspects.
Working with the client’s maintenance and engineering teams, the reliability engineers worked to establish suitable remedial actions for each finding to mitigate the issues.
- Roll out mechanical seal system installation training to offshore maintenance team.
- Communicate the clarified leakage rates with the onshore and offshore teams.
- Complete a pump performance curve assessment to identify potential operational changes.
- Collaborate with the client’s corporate rotating machinery team to improve online monitoring of seal system parameters.
- Communicate the importance of effective venting during plant startup.
- Implement TEG filtration prior to tank filling.
- Modify seal system PCVs to remove unnecessary filters.
- Complete production critical spares review for mechanical seals.
- Enhance maintenance plans with barrier fluid sampling and thermography.
- Change central seal system filter size to 10 microns (typical for this application).
- Consider mobilizing seal system vendor for system review.
- Confirm that the identified seal design issues have been resolved.
The combined effect of implementing the recommendations led to a noticeable improvement in pump operational availability via a reduction in unplanned downtime. This helped the client reduce costly financial and operational losses.
Such was the benefit, the client opted to make the study ‘evergreen’, with any future pump failures analyzed using the same process.
The study showed the advantages of a holistic approach to addressing mechanical seal failures, incorporating technical, operational, and strategic elements to achieve lasting improvements in asset availability and operational practices. An additional benefit of having Oceaneering reliability engineers embedded within the client's operations team also enabled an efficient integrated approach to optimizing pump reliability, whilst freeing up the client’s own resources.
Ob im Rahmen eines einmaligen Projekts oder eingebettet in ein Betriebsteam, die Betriebszuverlässigkeitsdienste von Oceaneering können auf die Bedürfnisse des Unternehmens zugeschnitten werden und bieten innovative Lösungen zur Verbesserung der Betriebseffizienz und -zuverlässigkeit für eine Vielzahl von Anlagentypen.
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