Seetru Condition Rating: Providing Confidence In Your Valve's Operation

Safety Valve Management improved by Seetru Condition Rating® - Risk Based Inspection - The biggest challenge during safety valve planned maintenance programmes is correctly to determine your maintenance frequencies. Maintaining a valve just because a period of time has passed is inefficient, ineffective, costly and potentially risky. Gaining assurance that your safety valves operate as the manufacturer intended and certified when demanded, requires far more detailed and additional information than a normal test and component condition report can provide. Industry wide standards for set point verification are modelled around the audible leak point. Seetru can prove this to be ineffective when setting and assessing valves. The first and most important information required while setting a safety valve is the initial or first point of lift (set point given as P.S.O. - pressure set to open). This is when the valve overcomes the applied spring force required to achieve the set pressure plus the applied spring force required to actually seal the valve. It is this information that manufacturers use in the design process to ensure the valve from this point will accumulate to the fully open position, thus giving the required and certified mass flow at a known overpressure. The second element required is the point at which the valve actually starts to pass, this is normally explained as first audible leak and expressed as (P.S.L. - pressure set to leak). The noise generated by the 'first audible leak' could be that the valve is about to open, or it could be that the reduction in available sealing force has simply allowed the valve to leak/pass? Poorly refurbished valves will be set heavy if the audible leak point occurs before the valve begins to lift. Obtaining the set point from the audible leak point could put your plant at serious risk as the valve may start to lift at some point after the required set point and, in fact, could be beyond the M.A.W.P. (Maximum Allowable Working Pressure) of the system. Seetru's patented COMPU-TEST™ is the only system that produces a measured and concise condition rating analysis of safety valves: Seetru Engineering Services Condition Rating will measure and record all the important parameters and produce a simple to understand reading - 0 - 3 = An "as new" condition and within the manufactures design and build tolerances, indicating very little or no deterioration - inspection and/or test frequency correct, plus, could be considered for extension. 3 - 6 = A valve that will still protect the system but is starting to show signs of deterioration - consideration should be given to perhaps shortening the inspection and/or test frequency to keep the condition within acceptable limits. 6 - 9 = Absolute limit of acceptability and requires remedial work at the very first opportunity, inspection and/or test frequency possibly requires shortening. >10 Valve will not protect the system as the manufacture and designers expect. Seetru Engineering Services offer the COMPU-TEST™ - The only fully computerised and complete Safety Valve Test System. The ideal starting point when gaining performance data for safety valves is from new. This condition rating benchmark works as an initial data point for comparison when monitoring the rate of deterioration through the maintenance points. Extending maintenance schedules should be based on measured evidence and not on perception- COMPU-TEST™ is unique to Seetru Engineering Services and provides such evidence. Confidence that valves operate within the required parameters between maintenance schedules, will allow evaluation and possibly consideration to prolonging maintenance scheduling = Saving time and money. Condition Rating ensures your valves will always work if, in the unlikely event, they are required to do so in anger = Risk Reduction. Condition rating maintenance reduces leaking safety valves = Cost Reduction. Seetru Engineering Services - Redefining Maintenance Standards Contact Our Engineers For More Information: Bristol Stockton-on-Tees Tel: +44 (0)117 930 6148 Tel: +44 (0)1642 625 900 Fax: +44 (0)117 927 6874 Fax: +44 (0)1642 625 901 Email: matt.little@seetru.com Email: jill.peacock@seetru.com

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