Gaskets

Yesterday, I attended a very interesting and informative training about gaskets. I never imagine that there are a lot to learn and explore about gaskets. After attending the training (delivered by Nipseal), my comprehension on gasket improved and I began appreciating it more. From the training, I know that there are various types and material of gaskets. Prices of gaskets vary a lot and some type of gasket is very tedious and difficult to manufactured/fabricated. Well, what is a gasket? According to Wikipedia, a gasket is a mechanical seal that fills the space between two objects, generally to prevent leakage between the two objects while under compression.

Other definitions/descriptions of gasket:

"A flexible material used to seal components together; either air-tight or water-tight" (PartSelect.com).

"Any of a wide variety of seals or packings used between matched machine parts or around pipe joints to prevent the escape of a gas or fluid" (Staffgasket.com).

Gaskets are commonly produced by cutting from sheet materials, such as gasket paper, rubber, silicone, metal, felt, fiberglass, or a plastic polymer.

Gaskets save money by allowing less precise mating surfaces on machine parts which can use a gasket to fill irregularities. Gaskets are commonly produced by cutting from sheet materials, such as gasket paper, rubber, silicone, metal, cork, felt, fiberglass, or a plastic polymer (such as polychlorotrifluoroethylene). Gaskets for specific applications may contain asbestos. It is usually desirable that the gasket be made from a material that is to some degree compressible such that it tightly fills the space it is designed for, including any slight irregularities.

Gasket is very important in a process plant. It maintains the energy, temperature and pressure in a process system. Selecting a suitable gasket is a must because it does cost money. It is also directly related to the process temperature, pressure, type of medium (fluid or gas) and the chemical properties of the medium.

Another new knowledge that I learned is about spiral wound gasket that can withstand pressure up to 70-80 bar. It is a very interesting and carefully manufactured gasket made of stainless steel. However, I shall elaborate more about this in another post because it is deserve its own post!

OK, let me just explain about the simple/normal gasket. With reference to the left illustration, the gasket is sandwiched between flanges. The property of the gasket and correct compression/tightness allows the process system to maintains it pressure and would not allow oil or gas to leak.

The above illustration shows how a gasket is positioned and locked between those 4 bolts.

Another illustration shows how a gasket is positioned and locked between those 8 bolts.

We install/fix the correct type of gasket before connecting the pipeline with flanges.

The above photo is a very interesting one. It shows the condition of gasket after being used for some time. It is difficult to remove the gasket by bare hands because the gasket sticks very well. We need to use suitable tools to peel and remove the gasket from the flanges. Usually, flanges like this is opened during shutdown to clean/clear pipelines or vessels. After inspection, a new fresh gasket will be used. Never use a gasket twice.

Without a gasket, a 12" butterfly valve like this will leak and spill oil or water and spray gas or steam (depending on your application).

Gasket is not only used between flanges. It is widely used everywhere in a process plant and in our kitchen (the refrigerator). In a plant, gasket can be found in the heat exchanger, valves, vessel man holes etc. The gasket needs to be properly maintained to ensure no upsets in the plant.

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Some Updates

I was busy for the past few days. I sincerely apologize for not updating more frequently. By the way, as usual, I experienced a lot of new things at work. Let me share some of them with you .


Between working in the office and at plant-site

I have been an office dweller since a few months back because I was busy doing some paper works, reports, planning, documents/filing 5S, meetings, appointments with supplier, trainings etc (Once in a while I came out and toured the plant, visited the control room, discussed few things with the supervisors and plant operators). After some time warming up the chair in my cold well air conditioned office, I felt really bored sitting in the office staring at the 15" LCD monitor. The past 3 days, I spent majority of my time in the plant and made my hands dirty. I equipped myself with a meter tape and pens of different coloured ink. Normally, when I walked in the plant, I'll be sweating. Some section in the plant is really hot (like a sauna!!). However, the past few days was luckily colder (thanks to the rainy day...) - So I sweated only a little! We (myself and my senior colleague) planned to install an alternative back-up pipeline for some section in the plant where tendency of blockage is most likely to occur. I have to come out with a plan on which route and how to install the pipeline. With that, I also have to calculate how many valves, elbows, flanges incorporated
with the new pipeline.

In addition to that, we're going to install a new plate heat exchanger (PHE). The PHE will arrive somewhere in August. Other materials for the PHE such as piping, valves, elbows, expansion bellows, sockets, metal plates etc have arrived. I have measured and marked the location/position for the PHE installation. It's not a big upgrading project, but surely I learned and experienced a lot through out the process of getting and installing a new PHE. I hope after the installation of this heat exchanger, our heat profile can be improved and the natural gas consumption can be reduced (utility saving means production cost saving).


Process plant - Heat Recovery View

One of our plate heat exchanger has undergone cleaning in place (CIP) for 2 weeks already. We consumed a lot of caustic and decarbonizer in order to thoroughly clean the plate heat exchanger. Yesterday, we stopped the CIP, flushed the pipeline and heat exchanger with water and air. Then we began using the heat exchanger. Today, I checked the flow rate and outlet temperature. Unfortunately, the temperature is not as high as it is supposed to be. We checked the outlet temperature from the control room (The RTD {resistance temperature detector} installed at the heat exchanger oil outlet sent signal to the PLC and therefore we can see the temperature reading from the Human Machine Interface (HMI)/monitor/PC in the control room).

I was not satisfied with the situation. We consumed a lot of chemicals, water, time, man hour etc to perform this CIP. The temperature should not be like that. It should be good. I personally inspected the pipeline and heat exchanger. My intention was to double check the temperature with the temperature gauges installed at the pipeline. There were all together 3 units of temperature gauges that can be referred and the temperature readings are all higher than the RTD reading. I knew it....Earlier, I already suspected that the RTD is not right. The RTD need to be serviced and calibrated. From here, I learned: Never 100% trust your instrument. They can be a good indicator for process control and instrumentation, but we also need alternative/back-up equipment/instrument to counter check the readings. Sometimes we can be deceived and made expansive wrong decision just from a false instrument reading. This will cost money and time which is very precious in this type of industry.


Manpower Issue

I received a resignation letter from one of my sharp and skillful plant operator. I have high hopes and plan to promote him to a higher position next year. Unfortunately, this is a global and universal issue that all private companies encountered. After chatting with him, I realized he has multiple reasons for leaving the company after serving for 9 years. Hence, I accepted his resignation and respected his decision. I just wish the very best of luck for him and hope he will be successful in future.

With his departure, I have to recruit a new plant operator and train him. The criterias that we require are very simple - (1) A discipline person which means, will always come on time for work and would not be absent. (2) Willing to learn and work hard. (3) Take care of the cleanliness and smoothness of the plant.

I think those requirement should be ample. We don't need good academic result plant operator. Their attitude is the most important trait. With good attitude, they can climb the ladder of success. Just like my previous senior production executive colleague who started just as a cleaner/sweeper (25 years ago) but ended up now very successful as a factory manager taking care of a number of plants and projects in a foreign country.

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Photo of the Day - Troll Platform

It looks like I'm biased or obsess with the oil and gas offshore photos. I cannot hide that because the industry is really good, interesting, fun, exciting and challenging. Trust me its a wonderful feeling being on those offshore platform, and that's probably why I keep on having those photos here. Gosshhh, I really miss my offshore life...

OK, about the photo. The platform is called Troll A platform (click at the photo to enlarge it, trust me it's gorgeous!). It is a huge platform for production of gas, it is the highest construction that has ever been moved to another position, and is among the largest and most complex engineering projects in history. Built by Norwegian Contractors for Norske Shell, the platform was a televised sensation when it was towed into the North Sea in 1996, where it is operated by Statoil. I'm guessing there are about 200-300 people working on this gas platform.

Troll A has an overall height of 472 meters and weighs 656,000 tons. It has the distinction of being the tallest structure ever moved by mankind. The platform stands on the sea floor 303 meters below the surface of the sea. The walls of Troll A's legs are over 1 meter thick.

The base and the deck were built separately (starting in 1991-1992). They were joined while the base was partially submerged. The Troll platform was towed over 200 km from Vats, in the northern part of Rogaland, to the Troll field, 80 km north-west of Bergen. The tow took seven days. The platform is built of reinforced concrete using the Condeep technology. Gas rises from 40 wells, and is exported through a number of pipes.

In 2006, the 10th anniversary of Statoil's operatorship of Troll gas production was celebrated with a concert by Katie Melua held in the Troll A platform. As well as entertaining the workers on the rig, the concert set a new world record for the deepest underwater concert at 303 meters.^[1] In 1996 the platform set the Guiness World Record for 'largest offshore gas platform'.^[2]

Facts adopted from Wikipedia while photo adopted from oilrig-photos.com.

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Supplements for Chemical Engineering World Blog

This weekend have been a really tiring one for me. Not because I went to work or spent the weekend site seeing or shopping with my family. Not because I sent my car for servicing (my car really needs servicing...). But I worked and burnt the midnight oil to introduce two new supplemental site to my blog for my readers: "Chemical Engineering Forum" and "Chemical Engineering World Jobs". OK, let me explain about them...


Chemical Engineering Forum

I have started the forum for this blog earlier (end of last year). However, I never seriously promoted the forum. Since I have already given a new face lift to this blog last month, I thought of giving the forum a new image and life as well. I changed the entire black colour of the forum to a more refreshing look. I also introduced 7 categories for active and deep discussion of chemical engineering stuffs in the forum:

1. Chemical Engineering in General
2. Oil and Fats Industry
3. Oil and Gas Industry
4. Research and Development : Academia / Post Graduate
5. Research and Development : Industry / Business
6. Practicing Engineer Zone : Chemical Engineering
7. Student Zone : Chemical and Process Engineering

When you arrive at the forum page, you have to first sign up/register. Don't worry, the registration is just a short process. As soon as you register, you're free to read, explore and participate in the forum. The number of topics available are still small but I'm sure it will grow with time. The forum currently have 23 members. I hope you can join and actively participate and benefit from it big time!


Chemical Engineering World Jobs

This is a new job site powered by simplyhired.com which list down real time chemical engineering jobs in the USA (I don't know when it can show chemical engineer jobs outside USA, I just hope they will do it soon). It is updated daily and which means the available positions are fresh, latest and up to date. I positioned the link to Chemical Engineering World Jobs at the Jobs link above and at the bottom right column of this blog.

One good thing about this site is, related companies can advertise the chemical / process engineer jobs in it with as little as $5/month. The process of job advertising is simple and straight forward. Chances of ads read by potential employee is high as the site only display niche chemical and process engineering jobs. For graduating students and other engineers, it is a good website to shop around for your dream job and establishing your career.

For both the Chemical Engineering Forum and Chemical Engineering World Jobs , I'm continuously improving them so everyone can gain the best out of it.

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Photo of the Day - Cooling Tower

The photo of the day is a Cooling Tower in Wilton International petrochemicals complex. Wilton International is one of few sites in Western Europe with special development status, designed for heavy industrial use such as chemicals and process plants. Many of the world's leading chemical and manufacturing companies are well established at Wilton, including blue-chip multinational such as BP-Amoco, DuPont, HISI (jointly owned by Huntsmant and ICI), DuPont Sa, ICI, Targor (jointly owned by BASF and Hoechst), and Union Carbide. This is actually a natural draft wet cooling hyperboloid towers (it doesn't use fan). The photo is taken from FreeFoto.com.

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Chemical Engineering World Blog 1st Aniversary

As the title shows, today is the first anniversary of this blog and I'm really happy and pleased with the progress and response I received from all of you. It really took a lot of effort and time to create and post articles inside this blog, especially when I am working full time as a process engineer and at the same time a father and husband. Time is not always on my side. I always hope I can publish daily post and socialize/share with my readers, but the time is very limited. Then I set myself to at least posting three times a week. I hope I can still maintain that.

This will be a relatively longer post as I will share my experience on developing and maintaining this one year old blog. Maybe a little bit of my plan for this blog too. I hope it's not going to make anyone of you sleep.

Exactly one year ago, I started this blog. That time, unlike now, the template of this blog was black in colour. Those of you who have been following my blog earlier definitely have noticed it. I just recently renovated and improved the look of this blog to introduced some element of professionalism. Now, I'm happy using this template and I'm going to progressively improve it from time to time.

If you noticed the feedburner chicklet on the top right column of this blog, I must say, I'm surprised with the number of subscribers this blog is having. I never thought the number can reach as high as that for a technical niche blog like this. As the year 2007 entered, I set a target to get 100 numbers of subscribers by the end of the year. However, thanked God, I managed to reached 100 subscribers by the 4th of June this year. Thanks very much for the support from all of you.

I think I should share some statistic and facts about this blog as well. As engineers, going through numbers/facts would be more interesting and appealing....do you?

No of posts including today's post = 255 (per year)
No of categories in the blog = 45
No of contributor excluding me = 1 (my wife, who's a chemical engineering lecturer)
p/s: I welcome contributor
Google PageRank = 5 >>> that's good for a blog like this....
Technorati Authority: Rank = 211,232 (Authority 30)
Alexa Traffic Rank = 1,696,403 (425,105)
No of time spent on this blog = Gosh....I never measure it....but I can say, too much...
Highest daily unique visitors = 226 unique IPs/day (different people)

Don't bother if you don't know about the rank stuff, it's just a number. It's just how I evaluate and check my blog performance throughout time.

Earlier, I set up a forum for this blog. Well, some of you may notice the forum is not properly maintained. It's my intention to re-invent re-introduce the forum for this blog. I'll made an announcement/post about it pretty soon. I hope it can be a place to actively discuss issues related to chemical engineering stuff...

I would also like to announce that Chemical Engineering World blog accepts advertisement that is relevant to chemical engineering stuffs. Advertisements do not necessarily represent my views, but will supplement my monthly income. For any local or international company interested in sponsoring or advertising your products/services in this blog, please email/contact me.

While maintaining this educational chemical engineering blog, I did receive various interesting comments from my readers. Some of them prefer sending me direct emails, which I don't mind. I must confess that I'm truly happy receiving comments and emails from my readers. Keep on sending those comments and emails as long as they are related to the post or blog niche. I would like to share with you some of those comments which made me smile....(I have to translate/edit some of them which were written in Malay Language).

The first comment from my virgin post "Chemical Engineering Career", Sam (my friend who is presently working in Egypt) said...

"He is my old good friend.. very nice guy.. all the best to you my bro.. hope this blog will benefit our young Chemical Engineer..."


From "Some Maintenance Job During a Very short shut down", DR Bubble (my chemical engineering classmate who turned to become a professional clown) said...

"Good bang (bro), language simple. senang nak faham (easy to understand) even for non-engineers alike..keep it up! ..."


From "Early Chapter As A Chemical Engineering Student Part II", Anonymous (Suzie - my chemical engineering classmate currently working as a design engineer with Graham Heat Exchanger in UK ) said...

"zaki
yes i remember that engineering maths subject and that whatsisname encik??$%^&, used to love maths until that point in my life, that man really put me off maths big time! My grade was cukup2x makan (just marginally enough) haha...on the other hand, loved unit op, very interesting subject plus that UM lecturer was hmmm lovely. Also i think that 1st year design project was actually called professional study something? It was a group task, one of my groupmates was your now-other-half. Overall NCUK was all good fun...very tough but aren't we glad we went through that all...suzie"

From "My Intention", Anonymous said...

"Very Helpful articles. good stuff.
We are facing lot of trouble with the performance of cooling tower during the summer season here in UAE. Can u suggest any alterations to improve the cooling effect."
Saravanan
Plant and Maintenance Engineer
ponsaravananm@gmail.com"(Mr Saravanan, I'll come back to you later about your cooling tower, sorry for the delay...)

From "My First Heat Exchanger Encounter", Joe-Anybody (from USA) said...

"Hello There,

It's Oct 15 20o6. Just was reading my similar feelings about my first "Heat Exchanger" as well.
I seen a picture of a heat exchanger on one of your pages and I think it is like the same style we have in both buildings. Almost exactly!
I have to say I have never seen them work much (if at all) and I think they are a small head-ache to get torn apart cleaned and put together.......thats just from watching a few times when they were being "messed with" by past engineers..
Maybe our need for them to be running is not necessary? ...one is brand spank-in new in the remodeled building....it just sits there......?
The older one may of been running at one time... but seems to be a project waiting for someone to deal with with they are bored.

I kinda understand the principle... just never have had anything to do with them.

Thanks for the interesting blog!"

From "Terrifying Moment At Boiler House", Joe-Anybody said...

"You were lucky
I am curious what happened
I work around a few boilers
I mainly am just testing the chemicals and either adding more by adjusting the feed pumps or blowing down the boiler to dilute.
I am new to all this and just came across your website. I will be back to your site to see what all is concluded or how the explosion was cause. I am glad you are OK
Thanks"

From "Design of Experiment For Chemical Engineering Research", curiouscat (the son of Mr Hunter who introduced Box Hunter DOE) said...

"Here are some good sites with more information on design of experiments and articles on design of experiments including many from the Center of Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin that was founded by William Hunter, my father and George Box (leaders in the field, in my biased opinion, but others opinions as well)."

I also received comment which really looks like an advertisement in "Dismantling Plate Heat Exchanger", Anonymous said...

WE PRODUCE ALL GASKET FOR ALL TYPE AND BRAND OF PLATE HEAT EXCHANGERS LIKE ALFA LAVAL, APV, GEA, TRANTER-HISAKA, VICARB, SONDEX, SCHMIDT,FISCHER.
WE ARE:
THORNHILL ITALIA S.R.L. (ITALY)
PHONE +39 (0) 321 877 541
FAX +39 (0) 321 879 259
E-MAIL INFO@THORNHILLITALIA.IT
WEB WWW.THORNHILLITALIA.IT

During my plant shutdown early 2007, "Accident and Injury", Joe-Anybody said...

"Sorry to hear you will be getting stitched up for the new year.
Sounds like it could of been worse. It seems like there was a faulty drain cover that was responsible for your mishap? Or a nice urban-boobie-trap was set.

Best of Wishes - Joe Anybody"

From "Overall Heat Transfer Coefficient (U-Value)", Manal (my chemical engineering classmate presently working in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia as a lecturer) said...

"U doing ok now, mate. All that reminded me of oscizik and hewitt's heat transfer books...."

From "Pipeline Corrosion", Mark C Reid (from UK) said...

"I never cease to be impressed by chemical engineer's ingenuity and skill... this post is a good example of the extreme environments they can be working in!"

From "Fixing Plate Heat Exchanger Gasket", Anonymous said...

"A very interesting, informative and nice chemical engineering blog. Keep it up!"

From "Chemical Engineering Post #200", Anonymous and Webworm said...

"Certainly it took lot to maintain such type of knowledge based blog"

"I have been reading your blog for quite sometime...keep up...If you are interested, you may visit my stuff...

http://webwormcpt.blogspot.com/Webworm"

From "Chemical Engineering eBook", Anonymous said...

"It has been Very good source of information for me from the day i join this blog, And this e book is what i was looking for since quite some time. Just curious how to take printout of any page".

From "Chemical Engineers Come and Go", Anonymous said...

"I love your blogs, keep it up. I'm a chemical engineer undergraduate. You inspire with every blog I read. :)"

From "Some Update From An Engineer", Yong Chin said...

"Hi Mr Zaki. I am a third year chemical engineer student studying at the University of Melbourne (I am Malaysian). I have been reading your blog for quite a while and I found that it is interesting and informative. Really appreciate your effort to maintain the chemical engineering blog even though you are busy with your work. Hope that there will be more interesting experience and information to be shared with your readers."

From "Spiral Heat Exchanger", maer wan said...

"Zaki dude, thanks for your info about this. surely, it changes my view of HEX (Heat Exchanger) from just co-current and counter-current.

anyway, just wondering, did your company do something like Pinch analysis stuff for the HEN (Heat Exchanger Network)?"

Well, those are just some of the comments that I highlighted here. Hmm about the direct emails, I prefer not to reveal it here. Let me just keep them in my mailbox. Furthermore, the sender must have personally sent the emails to me for their own reasons.

For those of you who enjoyed my post or blog, who want to continuously learn from practicing engineers like me, feel free to subscribe to my blog by filling up the form on the top right hand column. I hope you'll gain substantial benefit from this blog and I pray for you career success...

Thanks....Thanks for your continuous support....

Wilden Pump Seminar

Last week, I attended a half day Wilden Diaphragm Pump Seminar organized by Winston Engineering in Hyatt Hotel Johor Bahru. I like going to this type of seminar or training held in good 5 star hotels. Besides learning about the products and technologies, we were served with very nice yummy foods. It was a very informative and enriching seminar. Sometimes we can meet with colleagues from other companies and do some networking as well. OK, before I proceed, let me provide some basic information or definition of a diaphragm pump.

"Air operated pump that uses a flexible diaphragm to separate the pumping chambers. Handles high viscosity liquids or liquids with suspended solids" (definition from bascousa.com).

"A diaphragm pump is a positive displacement pump that uses a combination of the reciprocating action of a rubber or teflon diaphragm and suitable non-return check valves to pump a fluid. Sometimes this type of pump is also called membrane pump" (definition from en.wikipedia.org).

Diaphragms inside a diaphragm pump which are from various sizes and materials (rubber, plastic, Teflon® PTFE etc....)

Various types and sizes of metal diaphragm pumps which are from stainless steel, aluminium and alloy. There are also two types of join: bolted (stronger, tougher and can withstand higher pressure) and clamp (easy maintenance)

This is the demonstration set for the Wilden Pro-Flo X which is their latest diaphragm pump. The pump is capable to deliver similar flow with lesser air consumption which means we can save on our utility cost - the air. The comparison is made with the older version of Wilden's diaphragm pump.

A little bit something about Mr Wilden...

It all started from a person named Jim Wilden who was working with a company manufacturing steel/metal back in the 1950s. He always faced a problem while pumping using an electric pump because his working area is always wet and can be dangerous with life electricity around. At the same time, there are plenty of air (compressed air) around his work place. So, he kept thinking how to overcome the problem his facing. Finally he invented the first air operated diaphragm pump. I hope that story is correct, because that was informed to us by Wilden's Asia Pacific Manager during the presentation introduction.

Jim Wilden pioneered a revolution, inspired a generation of innovation and created an entire industry. Wilden Pump & Engineering Company was founded in 1955 on the sketches of a unique but reliable, utilitarian pump, the air operated double-diaphragm pump. Today Corporate ownership and "stand alone" local management provide Wilden with the clarity and focus needed to produce quality products Wilden products are engineered to meet today's industrial and commercial demands.

Since 1955, Wilden has been the market leader in air-operated-double-diaphragm pumps. Wilden is deeply committed to the pursuit of excellence, customer satisfaction, research & development and market knowledge. As a premiere organization, Wilden has the infrastructure, knowledge base, and intellectual capital to exceed customer expectations worldwide.

For more complete and comprehensive information about Wilden pump, please check Windenpump.com.

Oh yea...Wilden also have diaphragm pump made of plastic. I'm not sure this pump is suitable for what industry?

This is Wilden's latest patented pump which can run without pumping fluid. Normally, pump will be damaged if they run empty, but this pump is not like that. Can you see the ping pong ball floating on top of the discharge line of the pump?

Hmmm....this are some of the lucky draw prizes that was awarded to me. I got a nice compact mini toolbox, a silver wrist watch, a name card book holder, 12 pieces of ball pens. As a participants, I also brought back a jersey type t-shirt (I got extra red t-shirt - they gave away another t-shirt for those 25 participants who came earliest) and a 3 ink coloured ball pen. I managed to request another set of bags come with goodies and freebies for my boss. It's really fun getting souverniers like this....

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