...materials consultancy for industry

Oil and Petrochemical

 

Our experience in the oil and petrochemical industries extends over thirty years. We have familiarity with processes and materials of construction for major components such as piping, pressure vessels, columns, valves and heat exchangers and the problems these encounter in service.

We offer specialist engineering consultancy services principally in two areas. Firstly business improvement and technical problem solving through innovation and technology transfer. Secondly failure avoidance and failure investigation for product improvement or in support of litigation. The range of our activities include:
  • Failure avoidance- is performed by examining equipment and predicting the type of failures experienced by reference to our extensive data base.
  • Failure investigation- is regularly performed for all industries. This is an important part of any decision making
  • Risk assessment-On any equipment where failure is critical to safety, profitability or reputation.
  • Quality assurance- to assist companies to achieve ISO 9000 certification
  • Welding engineering- Many failures occur because of complacency in welding. We derive improved procedures to minimise costs and increase reliability.
  • Research & development- New products, innovations, technology transfers , design, stress analyses.
  • Selection of materials- Including metals, plastics, ceramics, coatings, surface engineering.
  • Acting as expert witnesses- Previous cases include equipment failure, transport accidents, pressure vessels, civil engineering, personal injury.
  • Training seminars- Given to engineers and workshop staff in the above topics and seminars are tailored to the needs of delegates.
  • Corrosion- . Extensive experience in corrosion both internal and exterior, taking account of water types and flow rate entrained particulate. Additionally, we have undertaken studies on bacteriological corrosion which has been a major problem for some of our clients.
  • Maintenance Systems-. RCM (Reliability Centred Maintenance) for multi-national companies where, for example, in the food industry in two years we have been able to save considerable sums of money and increase productivity.
  • Repair Techniques- We regularly develop innovative repairs to minimise costs and increase reliability. On a petrochemical plant we have been able to develop a welding procedure to repair previously unweldable stainless steel, so that the plant, which operates at high temperature has continued in operation for five years to date.
  • Management Consultancy- From our experience of failures, we are able to highlight management deficiencies and work through existing structures and to extract knowledge which has been hidden.