TABLE OF CONTENTS When handling highly hazardous or flammable materials, it is obvious that the reliability of critical rotating equipment such as blowers, compressors, and pumps is of high importance. Rotating equipment with the highest consequence if a failure would occur (Class 1 and Class 2 equipment) must have qualified personnel inspecting and testing in accordance with written procedures. Mechanics may require specific skill training.
Inspections of rotating equipment could be accomplished by "Preventive Maintenance Programs," which assures that equipment and machine behavior follow some sort of statistical average based upon weeks of operation or throughput in the process stream. Preventive maintenance (PM) programs the planned, periodic inspection of equipment reduces the occurrence of unexpected problems. Preventive Maintenance Programs are much more efficient to conduct than the old-fashioned breakdown maintenance programs of previous years in which failures often occur at undesirable times, interfere with production, and may prove to be more costly to correct. [2]
PM programs require the equipment to be shut down at regular intervals and inspected for wear, cleanliness, and conformance to assembly and performance tolerances. PM programs should detect small flaws before they grow into equipment problems which interfere with operation of the unit. The method can be satisfactory but can be expensive if no flaws are detected. Despite having a good PM program, an abnormally premature part failure may not be detected before serious damage occurs. In addition, the PM inspection process occasionally results in mistakes during the reassembly...
