COVER STORY 2

INNOVATIONS 4

TURNKEY SOLUTIONS 5

SUCCESS STORIES 6

Flow Solutions DivisionBW Seals

Durametallic SealsPacific Wietz Seals

Pac-Seal

VOL. 11, NO. 4

T H E S E A L I N G T E C H N O L O G Y M A G A Z I N E

BP’s Carson, Calif. refinery processes265,000 barrels of fuel products a day,and is the one of the largest in the Los

Angeles basin. Some 1,400 centrifugal pumpskeep product and raw materials moving throughthe refinery. Many of the pumps are deployed inredundant pairs, so pump failures rarelythreaten production. But failures are neverthe-less expensive—typically it costs around $5,000to fix a single pump, says Machinery EngineerSteve Konig. About half that amount goestoward mechanical seal replacements; the rest islabor cost to isolate, repair and reinstall thefaulty unit.

Konig and his colleagues reasoned that thebest way to keep repair costs low was to preventbreakdowns from happening in the first place.The company spotted a second opportunity toreduce costs by cutting its inventory of mechani-cal seals. Lack of standardization had led to aproliferation of parts, and contributed to highMRO costs. “We recognized that if we concen-trated on those two areas, BP would be ahead, sothat’s where we decided to focus our efforts,”Konig says.

The refinery was already a Flowserve customer,with close to $1 million worth of Flowserve sealsin its parts inventory. Working locally with SeniorSales Engineer Jeff Butler, BP Carson enteredinto an alliance with Flowserve in 1999, and thetwo companies began to explore specific savingstargets and ways the refinery could hit them.

Charting successTogether, Butler and BP Carson managersdeveloped four key performance indicators--deliverables that would chart the effectivenessof the alliance. First was to increase mean-time-between-failures (MTBF) for mechanical sealsby 45 percent over three years. Second was tocut BP’s mechanical seals inventory. Third wasto provide additional training for BP Carsonmechanics and operators. And fourth was toprovide timely delivery of seals and repairparts.

To set a performance baseline, Flowserve sur-veyed the 1,400 pumps, fed the data into a pro-prietary database called SIS (Seal InformationSystem) and began generating monthly reportson MTBF for each pump. Maintaining the accu-racy of the database is no trivial task. When workstarted, BP Carson’s own historical repairrecords were not especially reliable. “Carson is a75-year-old refinery,” comments Konig. “Manymodifications have been made over the courseof time that have been documented in varyinglevels of detail.”

Each month, Butler reviews the SIS reportswith BP Carson to make sure the numbers areaccurate. The information fed into Flowserve’sSIS comes from work orders generated by BPCarson’s computers. Misclassification of failuresand ordinary clerical mistakes-—duplicate work

2 www.flowserve.com Face to Face

cover story

orders, for example-—can throw the MTBF fig-ures off, he says, and defeat the whole purposeof the record-keeping exercise, so making surethe figures are correct is important.

Apart from charting Flowserve’s perform-ance, the MTBF numbers also help BP Carsonidentify what Konig calls the company’s “badactors”-—the pumps that fail frequently-—andfocus extra effort on resolving the root-cause ofthe recurrent failure.

The benefits of trainingOften, Konig notes, poor performance is notonly limited to misapplication or poor design,but to improper operation and installation. Andthat’s where training becomes important. “If wecan educate our operators so they can catchproblems before a pump fails catastrophically,we can switch to the spare pump and scheduleour work execution better,” Konig says.“Ultimately, we want to uncover problems andresolve them before they lead to pump failure.Again, the cost saving comes from not having topull the pump.”

Flowserve operates separate training pro-grams for BP Carson’s maintenance personneland operators. Maintenance people learn howmechanical seals work, what some of the criticalspecifications are, how to troubleshoot, and howto repair and reassemble the equipment.Operators learn how to spot problems thatmight lead to future pump failure. Butler leadsmost of the training, but BP Carson is also send-ing some of its people to Flowserve’s trainingcenter at its headquarters in Irving, Texas for in-depth courses.

Often, notes Butler, early seal failure is a symp-tom of other problems-—the wrong seal for anapplication, for example, or bad piping configu-ration. Misapplied seals, he says, are sometimesthe result of inconsistent purchasing and lack ofstandardization. In BP Carson’s case, Flowservematched its specifications to the refinery’s appli-cations and drew up a list of standards for sealuse. Apart from solving the misapplication prob-lem, standardization also meant a smaller inven-tory of seals and repair parts at BP Carson.

In addition, Butler went into the field, exam-ined each “bad-actor”pump and came back withrecommendations for low-cost piping and oper-ations changes that would prolong seal life.

Cost-effective recycling Flowserve keeps BP Carson’s inventory costsdown by warehousing replacement seals andrepair parts for the refinery. As used seals areremoved at the refinery, they’re returned toFlowserve. Flowserve refurbishes the seals andkeeps them in its inventory. When the refineryneeds replacements, the refurnished seals areshipped from Flowserve, which guarantees aminimum delivery time. Except for a small num-ber of emergency units, BP Carson holds no

Flowserve inventory, and this has cut its overallinventory investment significantly.

There are other advantages that come withreducing inventories, says BP Carson MaterialsSupervisor William Rosborough. “We save onthe cost of capital by not tying money up ininventory. We also don’t have to pay taxes oninventory we don’t own. We don’t have inven-tory that sits on the shelves and becomes obso-lete because it runs out of useful life forwhatever reason.” There are other savings, too.By consolidating most of its mechanical sealbusiness with Flowserve, the refinery cuts fewerpurchase orders and processes fewer invoices.

Although much of the relationship betweenBP Carson and Flowserve is contractual, whatmakes it succeed is Flowserve’s unwritten com-mitment of support-—Rosborough calls it thespirit of the alliance. “We know that sinceFlowserve is the preferred supplier under thisagreement, it will go to extremes to support us,”he says. “They go the extra distance to supportthe agreement. It also has to be a win-win situa-tion, so we try to do things that will benefitFlowserve. It’s a close interrelationship, ratherthan just a business deal.”

Onsite supportAmong the extras are Butler’s services. Konigreckons the Flowserve representative spendsabout half his time at the BP refinery, providingengineering support, making sure the mechani-cal seals are being applied correctly, examiningprocesses to ensure that they’re not contributingto seal failures and coordinating parts turn-around between BP Carson and Flowserve’swarehouse. “You can’t put a price on that dailyinteraction and the value that affords us,” saysRosborough.

Just 18 months into the alliance, BP Carson isalready surpassing some of the goals it hadexpected to achieve in three years. Instead ofreducing MTBF by the originally targeted 45percent, the actual figure currently is close to95 percent. Inventory levels are down by$400,000 and Konig puts the total saving gen-erated by the alliance so far at about $700,000.Much of that, he notes, are recurringeconomies that will save the refinery mainte-nance dollars for years to come.

“The Flowserve Seal alliance has allowed BP'sCarson refinery to remove costly inventory fromour warehouse shelves with a high degree of cer-tainty that Flowserve will provide us with a sealwhen we need it,” says Konig. This, coupled withactive measures to increase the refinery's MTBF(seal inventory surveys, bad actor lists, engi-neering design audits, training, etc.), hasresulted in a demonstrable benefit to BPCarson's bottom line.”

Adds Butler, “I think it’s been a good experi-ence. I think we both profit from it. And I thinkthere’s a lot more we can do over there.” ●

Face to Face www.flowserve.com 3

Flowserve circulators are seal support sys-tems for use with API Plan 54. Designedto support pressurized double or dual seal

arrangements, Flowserve seal support systemsare engineered to extend seal life by circulatingclean fluid between the seals at a certain pres-sure. Flowserve circulators provide maximumreliability for a full range of operating environ-ments, and offer heat removal capabilitiesthrough the use of a heat exchanger. Customcirculator models are available upon request.

Circulator Specifications:• A 25-gallon carbon steel reservoir with

sloping bottom, baffle, and manway.

• A 1/2" x 0.049" x 20' 316 SS cooling coilmounted in reservoir.

• Aluminum gear pump to produce 1 or 4gpm @ 40-400 psi with 100 SSU oil.

• A 1/2 H.P. or 1-1/2 H.P. 230/460VAC, 3-phase, 60-hertz TEXPmotor with motor adapter andcoupling.

• Machined aluminum manifoldwith relief valve, check andpressure control valves, as wellas extra ports for the additionof optional kits.

• A simplex filter with 10 micron spin onelement and vacuum gauge.

• A pressure gauge with a range of 0-600psi and a 2-1/2" dial.

Options:• Heat Exchanger Kit. Includes a heat

exchanger capable of removing 30,000BTU/hr with a 4 gpm flow rate and allinterconnecting piping to assemble ontoexisting unit.

• Safety Feature Kit. Includes a 1-gallon carbon steel accumulator with a Bunabladder rated for 3,000 psi, a dual-pilotoperated check valve and all necessarypiping and/or fittings to add to existingunit.

• Low Pressure Switch. Includes a SPDTexplosion-proof pressure switch.

• Low Level Switch Kit.Includes an ultrasonic-type, DPDT, 120-VAC,explosion-proof levelswitch.

• Note: All kits includeinstructions for field installation. ●

4 www.flowserve.com Face to Face

Presenting...Flowserve's circulator seal support systems

innovations

Nearly all of the multiple

seal applications at Mobil Oil's refinery in

Torrance, Calif. are tandem seals. According to Rob

Sonz, Reliability Engineer at Mobil, in the 1970s, the

plant found a handful of mechanical seal applications

that required pressurization in accordance with API

Plan 53. The circulators that made this possible have

been working well for the past 20-plus years. But,

recently old age began to take its toll on one of the

units. Rather than continue to rebuild and repair it,

Mobil simply replaced it with a new Flowserve

circulator because the application is mission-critical.

Making kraft paper generates blackliquor, a waste material. It is corrosiveand has a significant concentration of

suspended solids. Paper mills concentrate itfrom 15 percent to 65 percent. The thickenedliquor can be burned and the heat recoveredfor the evaporation and concentration process.

The hot, corrosive, abrasive black liquorslurry is unforgiving. Mills typically use multipleseal configurations and rely on AmericanPetroleum Institute Plan 54 for envi-ronmental control, which flushesthe seal with an external sourceof cool, clean barrier fluid. Thisconfiguration, however, has twoproblems. If the barrier fluidpressure drops, process fluidcan contaminate the barrierfluid stream. If the seal fails,uncontrolled quantities ofbarrier fluid can be injectedinto the process stream.

Modern paper mills haveoptions, including the FlowserveSL-5000 single balanced multi-spring car-tridge pusher seal, which is specifically designedfor abrasive slurry services. It eliminates theneed for the multiple seal arrangements andthe associated flush. Its unique design exposesthe seal faces to the pumped product to maxi-mize heat dissipation, a feature that eliminates acommon failure mode. A special shroud pro-tects the rotor drive pin and the compressionsprings in the stationary portion of the sealfrom build-up.

The seal helps the environment because itdoes not consume water and reduces the needfor waste water treatment.

Minimizing laborIrving Pulp and Paper in Saint John, NewBrunswick, is a century-old plant that produces1,000 tons of kraft pulp daily. To keep the solidmaterial in suspension, the plant uses a 500-gpm pump. The black liquor it recirculates hasa solids content of 60 percent and a tempera-ture of 210° F.

For most of its history, the plant operated onuntreated lake water—the only available watersupply. When mechanical seals were intro-duced, the plant had no choice of water to flushthe multiple seal arrangements. The surfacewater supply proved to have unreliable pressure

and flow to meet the requirements for the seals.Additionally, there is entrained solids in thewater. Suddenly, part of the normal routine dur-ing a semiannual shutdown was dismantlingand cleaning the seals and associated flowme-ters to remove accumulations of algae. Despitethe use of various types of algaecide, the prob-lem persisted. According to Don Samis, recov-ery area maintenance supervisor, this was atroublesome recurrent problem that consumedtoo many maintenance dollars.

Mike Jennex, the Flowserve representative inScarborough, Ontario, sug-

gested Samis try a FlowserveSL-5000 split seal-—whichdoes not require a flush—to minimize those costs.Samis agreed, and Jennex

had the seal installed in thespring of 1999. The SL-5000 has indeed

reduced maintenance demands.Samis reported, “We haven'ttouched it since it was installed.

We only change the grease twice ayear.” He added, “The seal paid for

itself within a year. The cost of one change-out is equal to the cost of the seal.”

Other plants, similar resultsConsider Stone Container Canada, Inc., NewRichmond, Quebec. “The plant originally usedpacking for the black liquor pumps,” notesAndre Berube, plant engineering and servicesmanager. In the early 1990s, the companybegan exploring mechanical seals for non-critical applications, starting with dual seals,then single seals. Building on the success ofthese initial moves, the plant became comfort-able enough with mechanical seals to considerthem for more critical applications.

Laval Robichaud, mechanical foreman, saysthe typical Flowserve mechanical SL-5000 seallasts two years or more in black liquor service.When the going gets tough, notes Robichaud,the key is in knowing how to apply and use sealseffectively. Fortunately for Stone Container,Flowserve recognizes the importance of beingable to provide the type of support that makesthis possible. “Marcel Lajoie [the Flowserve rep-resentative for Quebec] solves problems,” addsRobichaud. “He provides good service andtraining.” ●

Face to Face www.flowserve.com 5

Pushing failure out of the pictureHandling abrasive slurries is easy with a pusher seal

turnkey solutions

The Achille's heel of any non-contactinggas seal is its sensitivity to solids in theprocess stream. Even an already well-

engineered seal, such as the welded metal bel-lows type, is subject to the damage thatsuspended solids inflict. But, keeping solidsaway from the seal faces when the seal is idleis clearly the secret to designing a high-relia-bility seal.

Flowserve proved that it is capable ofmeeting this challenge when it devel-oped the TARSEx bushing as anaccessory for the Flowserve GX-200 non-contacting seal.The name of the bushing is an acronym for“tapered annulus radialsolid exclusion.” Itspurpose is to preventsolids from enteringthe face cavity evenwhen the seal isstatic—in contrast to a standardtapered retainingplate, which resistssolids only duringdynamic operation.

Right the first timeWhile stationary, the TARSExbushing rests against theretaining plate to provide a physicalbarrier to solids. In motion, grooves on thebushing's outer edge propel solids outwardradially. Because the taper on the bushingmatches that of the retaining plate, it formsa rotating annulus that enhances solids sepa-ration. The O-ring allows a pocket of gas tocollect to further restrict the movement ofsolids.

Field testing of the TARSEx bushing at DowChemical's Alberta plant confirmed that thedesigners had it right the first time. What isreputed to be the world's largest ethyleneplant is located in Ft. Saskatchewan, Alberta,

and has a annual capacity of 2.5 billionpounds. The Dow Chemicals plant was com-missioned in late 1994 and employs about1,200 people and covers 400 acres.

Since day one, the plant experienced prob-lems with a particular set of back pull-out APIpumps that move a material containing lowlevels of two impurities—benzene and a poly-mer. Because of the benzene content, fugitive

emissions are a critical concern.Originally, the pumps were

equipped with SB-100 seals,but that arrangement had

two problems—it didnot prevent therelease of fugitiveemissions and seallife was short. Dowthen tried GB-100seals, a change thatsolved the emissionproblem, but theinboard seal's life

was still only between45 and 60 days. An

investigation showedthat the seal failure was

related to accumulationof polymeric material.The plant had a spare

GF-200 seal that had been sit-ting in its storage area for two years.

In another attempt to solve the mean-time-between-failure issue, the plant installedthe seal and pressurized it with nitrogen. Thistime the seal lasted four months, but thatshort life may be attributable to the perfluo-roelastomer O-rings having taken a perma-nent set from being stored for so long.

Dow then tried a GX-200 double seal, butwith a TARSEx bushing in the bottom of thestuffing box, a configuration that has been inuse for just over a year. So far, the combina-tion has not failed. Dave Williamson, Dow'ssenior reliability specialist, said, “We have yetto spend anything on maintenance—except

6 www.flowserve.com Face to Face

success stories

How to preserve a seal with aThere is more than one way to keep solids from getting between

for oil changes—inthe last year. We havethree [TARSExbushings] in theplant. I have yet tosee one fail.”Williamson added,“The TARSEx bush-ing provides a pump-ing action in the stuffingbox to prevent polymerbuildup. There isabsolutely no question theproblem has been solved.” As faras payback, the relatively low cost of theTARSEx bushing saves the seal, makingthe payback extremely favorable.”

Overcoming process problemsEquistar Chemicals, Channelview,Texas, also suffered from a seriousprocess problem. Its 600 employeesproduce approximately 400 millionpounds of butadiene per year. Onepair of tower bottoms pumps at theplant moves 231°F butadiene and solvent. This stream, however, has abit of polymer in it. In only three tosix months, the polymer clogged thewetted components of the seal andthe unit would show signs of failure.When that happened, the plantwould switch over to the standbypump to keep the process operatingwhile the damaged seal was beingrepaired. The polymer, however,thickened as it cooled in the now idlepump. At ambient temperatures, itbecomes nearly impossible to rebuildthe cold, clogged seal.

The plant tried using the X-200 dou-ble liquid seal to solve the problem, butit, too, was prone to clogging. AltonSmith, the Flowserve representativefrom Deer Park, Texas, told EquistarChemical about the TARSEx bushing

as a possible problem solution. Smithoffered a process guarantee—if theseal didn't perform flawlessly for threemonths, he would not invoice Equistarfor the GX-200 double gas seal andTARSEx bushing. There was no way theplant could lose.

Said Kyle Gee, senior maintenanceengineer at the Equistar plant, “Wehad been spending $20,000 per yearon these pumps. I need to maximizepump availability, minimize mainte-nance cost, and maximize mean-time-between-failures.” He added, “Thetheory of having nitrogen behind thebushing to keep product out of theseal made sense.”

So far, it has made 13 months worthof dollars and cents for Equistar. Withthe TARSEx bushing in place, the trou-blesome bottoms pump has been oper-ating continuously for more than ayear and the plant has not yet had toswitch over to the standby pump.According to Gee, plant managementis thinking about fitting the standbypump with the same seal and TARSExbushing, just in case. ●

Face to Face www.flowserve.com 7

bushingthe faces