Availability optimization of an Hydrogen Production Unit through the RAM analysis

The aim of this paper is to give a practical example of the important role of the Mechanical Engineering in the field of Maintenance in all the production systems, to which an increasing interest has been developed, in addition to a great sensibility ad conscious attention. The Maintenance, indeed, in the last decades has evolved from a simple task of repairing the asset to an activity already planned during the design of a plant. The role of the Mechanical Engineering fits in an optimal way this context, since owner of all the knowledge needed not only to develop a process, but also to have the ability to dialogue with the expert in other disciplines as Chemical and Electrical Engineers. The main topic of this paper is the Availability optimization of an Hydrogen Production Unit, installed in Eni Porto Marghera Refinery, developed in the ISS International branch located in Rome, as subcontractor of that commission on behalf of KT – Kinetics Technology. In the first part of the work, a Maintenance definition is offered, with his evolutions all over the years and an overview of the types of Maintenance (preventive, predictive, on condition, corrective). Next, the concepts of Reliability, Availability and Maintainability are explained, with the Maintenance Engineering techniques which allow to outline the criticalities of the maintenance system, already in the design phase. Then follows a brief excursus regard the standard references and the description of the IT support used to carry out the availability analysis. On the other hand, the second part of the work, is dedicated to the presentation of the phases that will lead to the development of the availability analysis. Before that, it was considered reasonable to describe the ISS International SpA as work host company, combined with a description of the plant under study. The knowledge of the plant, in fact, was fundamental for the subsequent process analysis, in addition of all the process description from a chemical point of view. In this phase the study was oriented on the identification of the functional maintenance units of the plant, which represented the basis on which carry out the availability analysis. After that, the documents in which all the information about instruments and equipment available are collected were presented. The latter have been the object of study of the Reliability analysis, as the RAM analysis, results of what were determinant in the selection of the maintenance strategy to adopt, as well as essential in estimate the Availability of the Plant, as a fundamental parameter in the evaluation of the entire productivity of the Unit.