Combating Unscheduled Shutdowns and Outages by Utilising Non-Intrusive Inspection Technology

The requirement to combat the risk of unscheduled plant shutdowns and outages is of course obvious and is a direct result of these being a major cause of unplanned costs to plant operators. The ability to carry out inspection of plant non-intrusively and where possible on line can be an extremely important tool and can be used to achieve this goal. We will therefore review the ultrasonic techniques available and how they can be applied to demonstrate fitness for purpose within planned Plant Management Integrity and Condition Monitoring Systems. Other recent developments such as the move towards condition rather than time based inspection programs also necessitate the development of non-intrusive inspection techniques. All the methods described in this paper can de used Non-Intrusively and in most instances outside of plant shutdowns.