Maintenance engineering management of a LNG plant critical system: a case study of gas turbine dry gas seal

This paper focuses on maintenance management of critical equipment of a New Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant. The challenges associated with the risk of failure affect the operational conditions of the plant equipment, and also the recommendations by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to maintain critical system is a difficult task. In this paper a case study of a new gas turbine design within an LNG plant is considered. The maintenance cost, operation and availability are some of the most important concerns to the gas turbine operators. Majority of the gas turbine maintenance are related to the replacement and repair of hot section static parts. A review of the operating and maintenance practices for heavy-duty gas turbines and others critical equipment, with emphasis placed on the types of inspections and factors that influence maintenance schedules is presented. The Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) modeling and criticality analysis approach is used to analyse historical failure and maintenance data. To compliment the accuracy of data information careful consultation with the operators is conducted and we test the goodness of fit of using a Weibull model for the analysis. A maintenance optimisation model is discussed and an attempt is made to model the failure pattern to determine and recommend cost effective maintenance management schedule for the gas turbine dry gas seal.