Flow Solutions DivisionBW Seals

Durametallic SealsPacific Wietz Seals

Pac-Seal

VOL. 12, NO. 2

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

COVER STORY 2

CUSTOMER 4SOLUTIONS

TURNKEY 6SOLUTIONS

INNOVATIONS 7

Rubicon Inc.’s Geismar, La. facility is alarge chemical plant jointly owned byHuntsman International LLC andUniroyal Chemical Co. The plant

makes isocyanates—used in producing foamproducts for furniture and insulation—as well asother chemicals. The 75-acre facility is dividedinto seven operating areas, each containing sev-eral operating units. Altogether, the plant has650 to 700 pieces of sealed equipment.

Three years ago, Rubicon’s management rec-ognized that frequent seal replacements hadbecome a costly problem. Mean-time-between-replacement (MTBR) was running less than sixmonths, and according to Flowserve SalesEngineer Michael Reagan, some seals werebeing replaced almost weekly.

The landscapePart of the problem, Reagan says, lay in thenature of Rubicon’s business. Chemical plantsprocess a wide variety of materials under a widerange of conditions. No two plants are alike.“There are so many different types of applica-tions, different chemicals and unknowns, that alot of times, the people at the plant may not evenknow what they’ve got.” A second factor, he says,is that chemical plants tend to use ANSI(American National Standards Institute) pumps,rather than the more rugged API (AmericanPetroleum Institute) pumps Flowserve findsamong its refinery customers.

ANSI pumps, Reagan explains, use smallerbearings and bearing housings, and have thin-ner casings than API pumps. They’re a lot lessexpensive, however, and most of the time, theyget the job done. “But at this plant—and at oth-ers—you do come across some hotter applica-tions,” he says. Lighter construction makes ANSI

pumps more prone to failure,but the cost of replacing themwith heavier-duty equipment isprohibitive and, in most cases,it’s overkill.

The big pictureRubicon needed a seal vendorthat would do more than simplysupply it with replacements. “Wewanted to get our seal failuresunder control,” says RubiconMaintenance Engineer JohnKennedy. “We brought in all theseal manufacturers in our area.We went through their shopsand did audits. Upper manage-ment made the decision to gowith the service programoffered by Flowserve.”

The chemicals maker signed afive-year Alliance agreementwith Flowserve, one that boundthe seal manufacturer to

increase MTBR from 5.1 months at its onset inJanuary 1998 to 24 months by the end of thecontract period. The agreement covers two ofRubicon’s operating areas, and the companypays a fixed fee for the parts and servicesFlowserve provides.

Reagan began surveying the plant three orfour months before the contract went into effectto identify bad actors and estimate initial sealinventories. “We had a game plan for most every-thing in our area of the plant,” he says. The badactors were easy to identify and fairly easy to fix,and that yielded some impressive early results.“A lot of it was just the wrong seal, wrong mate-rials and the wrong seal piping plans. We wereable to solve those problems quickly and showsome immediate improvements.”

From square oneWhen the Alliance program with Rubiconbegan, there wasn’t a single Flowserve seal in theplant. As seals failed, however, Flowservereplaced competitors’ products with upgradedFlowserve products. The upgrades also con-tributed significantly to the lower failure rate.

Flowserve maintains a seal inventory worth$55,000 to $85,000 at the Rubicon plant.Although the seal maker owns the inventoryuntil it’s put into service, the cost of items usedis included in its fee. Rubicon, however, handlesinventory management. “It’s treated like a regu-lar stock item,” Reagan says. “There are orderpoints and minimums, and whenever they needsomething, they issue a purchase order—butthere’s no money attached to it because it’s afixed-cost deal. That way, Flowserve remains outof the inventory management business and isable to focus primarily on its reliability improve-ment process. All seal requirements use

2 www.flowserve.com Face to Face

Alliance program improves seal life nearly fivefold at Louisiana chemical plant

cover story

Turning your partner into a

Rubicon’s normal process and systems aretreated like ordinary inventory items, makingthis process transparent in nature.”

Of course, it’s in Flowserve’s interest—andultimately in Rubicon’s—to keep inventorieslean. Before the agreement took effect, Rubiconkept its own stock of seals and repair parts, andinventories were significantly larger than theyare now. Thanks to more careful control, fewerfailures and some standardization, Flowserve hasbeen able to reduce inventory, which helps keepcosts—and prices—in check. To the extent thathe can, Reagan has standardized on cartridgeseals. Occasionally that means using productsthat are beefier and costlier than the applicationwarrants, but the inventory savings make it agood tradeoff.

Continuing educationA key element in improving seal performance atRubicon has been operator training. Without it,operators “can definitely tear up more equip-ment in a day than you can fix,” Kennedy says.The operators “had no idea what seals were,”adds Reagan. “Not only did the training teachthem how seals work and how easy it is to screwthem up, but it also showed them that we werereally interested in helping them do their jobsmore easily, and so they took a genuine interest.Training was one of the most important thingswe did at Rubicon.”

“Basically, I’m trying to get the operators tooperate the pumps correctly, operate and main-tain the seals and support systems correctly, andspot plugged flush lines and fix them,” saysReagan. “A lot of them do it. Some of themdon’t. It’s just a matter of making them aware ofit, and it takes a lot of daily coaching.”

The original training sessions, held after hoursat the Rubicon site, took place nearly two yearsago, and Reagan reckons it’s probably time torepeat it. “They’ve had some turnover and somenew people came in,” he says. “Training is anongoing thing. You can’t just do it once and for-get about it.”

Effective leadershipAnother key element in improving seal perform-ance was the commitment by Rubicon’s mainte-nance management team toward this program.Three years ago, Rubicon maintenance practiceswere very much reactive in nature. There wereso many failures that few people had the time ortook the time to properly perform a root causefailure analysis and enact corrective action solu-tions. It wasn’t until management at Rubiconrealized that something had to change, and theirsupport and focus on correcting problemsrather than simply replacing seals was ultimatelythe foundation for success and improvements.Like any successful problem resolution, a prob-lem must be recognized before it can be solved.And certainly Rubicon’s management team sup-

ported this mentality by not only allowingupgrades and changes to seal designs, seal pip-ing plans and pumping systems, but encourag-ing millwrights, operators, and other craftsmento become involved in the process and suggestfixing whatever may have been wrong at thepump site. This interactivity and renewed focusby plant personnel on improving reliability andthe continuous support and encouragement ofmanagement are key components of the success-ful formula thus far at Rubicon.

“The existence of the Alliance established acompetitive air in the plant among the five main-tenance areas. We’ve improved our specifica-tions on pump baseplates, we’ve improved ourvibration monitoring. The Alliance enhancesour continuous improvement program,” saidGreg Mancina, area Maintenance Engineer atthe plant.

In the early days of the Alliance, Reagan was atthe Rubicon plant daily. Over time, as seal prob-lems were brought under control, he’s scaledthat back a bit, but Kennedy credits his presenceat the plant, and his expertise, for much of theperformance improvement. “Mike does anexcellent job of going out to the unit and sur-veying the seal systems, the flush pipes, pres-sures, temperatures—he monitors all those forus,” Kennedy says.

Getting closeIn some of Rubicon’s units, Flowserve reachedthe 24-month MTBR goal very quickly, saysKennedy. In others, progress has been slower. Alittle more than three years into the contract,overall, MTBR was around 23 months this pastMarch and April. Reagan is confident they willreach the 24-month goal before the end of sum-mer, and eventually exceed it. “We’re close,” hesays, “real close.”

“The Alliance has raised the capability of theworkforce to a higher plane. We want to be rec-ognized as a place that is the best. Flowserve hasreached some lofty levels (of performance) andthere is no telling where it will level off,”Mancina added.

The ANSI pumps could eventually limitimprovements, however. “If you get the rightseal and install it and maintain it correctly, itlasts as long as the bearings last,” says Reagan.“That’s really becoming the limiting factor atthis plant. We see more and more bearing fail-ures because we’re getting some seals to last aslong as the bearings.”

The current Alliance agreement, Kennedysays, is a trial. If all continues to go well,Flowserve will stay at Rubicon and possiblyexpand into other areas. A lot of things are inplace that will cause seal life to continue toimprove as time goes on, explained Reagan.Maintaining the program and continually look-ing for ways to make improvements is a never-ending process. ●

Face to Face www.flowserve.com 3

Two or three years ago, a Gulf hurri-cane shut down a refinery inMississippi. The storm took out sev-eral hundred pumps, and left the

plant’s maintenance and engineering peoplewith a big challenge: some 60 mechanical sealshad to be replaced, and 175 more were inneed of repair. For a solution, the refineryturned to Flowserve’s Quick-Response Center(QRC) in Baton Rouge, La.

“Most of the seals were repaired within twodays,” recalls Jamie Bourgeois, QRC managerat the Baton Rouge facility. “We were alsoasked to replace our competitors’ seals, andthe only way do that was to design and manu-facture them from scratch, and ship them outthe door, sometimes in less that eight hours.”

Heroics like this aren’t often needed,Bourgeois admits, but they demonstrate thelengths to which the company’s QRCs some-times go to serve their customers.

The Baton Rouge QRC serves customers—mostly refineries and chemical plants—alongthe Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Floridapanhandle, Arkansas, and parts of Tennesseeand Oklahoma. Somewhat oddly, it has onecustomer in Hawaii—the customer’s idea. TheBaton Rouge QRC is one of several regionalfacilities that repair existing mechanical seals;manufacture new seal parts; stock inventoryfor themselves, their customers and distribu-tors; and serve as a base for sales and servicepersonnel.

Building trustThe point of the QRCs is to provide strategicservices to the company’s customers, quicklyand thoroughly—partly to differentiateFlowserve from its competition, partly to backup contractual promises made to Alliance cus-

tomers and partly to serve the company’s inde-pendent distributors. The goal is to build trustand nurture relationships designed to last forthe long run. As a lure for new customers,especially new contract customers, the strategyseems to work.

“If you look at the design and operation of aFlowserve seal versus a comparable seal for acompetitor, they’re pretty much equal,” saysPete Gerstenkorn, Machinery ReliabilityEngineer for Citgo’s refinery in Lemont, Ill.“The thing that sets them apart is service, andI think Flowserve’s done a good job on theservice side. If we have a bad actor, we ask fortheir recommendations. They’ve been great atfollowing up with proposed or recommendeddesigns, getting them out to us reasonablyquickly, and then if there are any problemswith the installation, servicing that as well.”

The Lemont refinery is in the final stages ofsigning an Alliance contract with Flowserve.Others, says Gerstenkorn, will be watching.“We’re shifting into a phase where Flowserve canhelp us a lot. My expectation is that we’re goingto make a lot more headway in the next year.”

Much of that headway likely will be due tothe efforts of the QRC in Burr Ridge, IL, about10 miles up the road from the Lemont refin-ery. Like its counterpart in Baton Rouge, thefacility houses manufacturing, repair, inven-tory, engineering and sales operations. And,like the Baton Rouge QRC, its customersinclude refineries and chemical plants, butalso paper mills and agricultural companies inthe upper Midwest.

Time of the essenceRegional QRC Manager, Ray Capek, prides hisQRC on its ability to design, manufacture andassemble seals quickly. Recently a customer’s lastminute change required a complete redesign tothe seal. The CAD designers were able to com-plete this task and get drawings to the machineshop without delaying the customers order.

“We’ll start manufacturing even before thework is put into our computer system,” Capeksays. “That way, we’re manufacturing while thepaperwork is being processed. We sometimeshave a part in assembly waiting for a part number,which means it’s waiting for all the paperwork to

4 www.flowserve.com Face to Face

customersolutions

It’s not unusual for a driver to bring

a customer’s seal in to a QRC for

service and wait in the parking lot

while the work’s being done.

Timely service, close customer ties make QRCs a key element in Flowserve’s business approach

The right stuff... at the right time

catch up to it.” Turnaround on repairs is just asquick. It’s not unusual, says Capek, for a driver tobring a customer’s seal in for service and wait inthe parking lot while the work’s being done.

Much of the $800,000 worth of inventorythe Burr Ridge QRC keeps on hand is sealcomponent parts, but Capek keeps some fin-ished seals earmarked for specific customersin stock, too. Under an Alliance agreementwith BP’s Whiting, IN, refinery, for example,the QRC keeps a supply of seals on the shelf tosupport the refinery’s critical pumps, andguarantees delivery of those within four hours.Other parts are earmarked for Flowserve’sindependent distributors, and Capek notes hisQRC occasionally ships parts and even newlymanufactured seals to other QRCs whenthey’re overloaded. “We all help each other,”he says. “If we can’t get something donequickly enough, we call other locations. That’show the QRC network functions as a group.”

Gearing upQuick turnaround, quality products and acooperative staff at the Baton Rouge QRCbrought Motiva’s Norco, La., refinery into theFlowserve Alliance program three or fouryears ago, says Steve Campbell, the refinery’ssenior mechanical engineer. The fact that a sis-ter plant in Martinez, Calif., had signed onwith the program a number of years earlieralso played a part in the decision.

“The biggest thing that pushed us toward theAlliance was the service and the quality we weregetting from Flowserve,” Campbell says. “Theyhad seals for the vast majority of our applica-tions. They had very good service. The quality oftheir seals was good, and the people we workedwith were good, very willing to work with us.”

Motiva is a joint venture of Shell, Texacoand Saudi Aramco that refines and distributespetroleum products in the eastern part of theU.S. The Norco plant, a few miles west of NewOrleans, processes about 240,000 barrels of oila day and operates approximately 1,400pumps. With that many seals to worry about,inventory standardization and reduction areamong key goals of Motiva’s Alliance program.

“We’re on our way to reducing inventory bygoing with standardized seals,” Campbell says.“Previously, we might have had a seal in stockfor just about every pump. We’re working onconsolidating that with the program. We’realso working to improve reliability, though wewere already well on our way to making thoseimprovements. We’ve asked Flowserve to comeon board and to be more proactive in helpingus look at reliability problems, and they have aguy on site here who works with us on that.”

Campbell hopes to eventually move more ofMotiva’s seal inventory off his site and ontoFlowserve’s, but it will take time, he says, beforethe refinery’s operations people get comfortable

with the idea of not having seals on a shelf some-where inside the plant’s gates. That will change,Campbell notes, as they get more comfortablewith the level of service and expertise from theBaton Rouge QRC. “As the operations folks gaintrust in the Flowserve folks—that they’re goingto be here when we need them and that they canget things turned around quickly—we’re headedtoward vendor stocking,” he says.

Meanwhile, the QRCs continue to invest inpeople and equipment to continually improveservice. The Burr Ridge facility, for example,just invested in new machinery that cleansparts and removes corrosion without remov-ing any metal, and Capek’s hiring moremachinists. “We basically look at servicing thecustomer first and providing quick turn-around, then we worry about processing thepaperwork,” he says. ●

Face to Face www.flowserve.com 5

At the lathe is Rick Kush, machinist.

Ray Capek, regional operations manager, checks out the sealmanufacturing line.

At the helm of the milling machine, machinist Scott Buemer.

Burr Ridge QRC

One of Huntsman Corporation’s JeffersonCounty Operations in Port Neches, Texas,covers 585 acres and employs 500 people.

The plant produces, among other things, propy-lene oxide and methyl tertiary butyl ether in aprocess that uses a peroxidation recycle compres-sor to pressurize an isobutane stream to 450 psi.

Huntsman expects five years of life from com-pressor seals. The seals are inside the compressor

and were last replaced in1998. As long as the com-pressor shaft turns, a windback device keeps circulatinglubricating oil away from theseals. When the compressorcontrols shut the unit down,however, the now stationarywind back system can nolonger protect the seals.

“Although the unit wasoriginally set up with seal

purge ports, the manufacturer of the competitor’sgas seals never recommended that the purge systembe used,” said Seth Toups, the plant’s maintenanceengineer. Even when the system was finally activated,the enormous amount of nitrogen it consumedclearly demonstrated that its design was not cost-effective. Meanwhile, the competitors seals sufferedfrom a worsening leak problem from day one.

When the compressor came back on line after ashutdown in September, 2000, the leak worsened.That is when Toups had enough. He called Flowserveto perform an on-site root cause analysis to identifywhy the seals were so unreliable.

Detective workThe ensuing investigation revealed several contribu-tory factors. “The compressor seals were operatingright at the limit of their {pressure] capability,” saidStewart Shoefstall, the local Flowserve representa-tive. “Also, the O-rings were being degraded fromchemical attack, not by isobutane, but by the 20 or sotrace contaminants. Finally, the degraded O-ringswere being extruded right out of the seal.

Huntsman needed the unit to be back onlineimmediately, but nobody, not even Flowserve, canbuild a set of compressor gas seals overnight (normaldelivery is 16 to 18 weeks). The only practical rec-ommendation Flowserve could make was to changethe O-ring’s material of construction. Although themove was acknowledged to be a mere expedient, itwas a temporary measure that bought Flowservetime for more rigorous fact-finding and identifica-tion of a definitive solution to the problem.

The solutionThe Flowserve answer was comprehensive. Itincluded a seal having a greater pressure rating.Energized Teflon gasketing protected it from chem-ical attack. The recommendation included replacingthe wind back devices with carbon rings that can bet-ter protect the secondary seals. The answer also rec-ommended extensive changes to the nitrogen purgesystem to improve its ability to protect while slashingnitrogen consumption to a mere whisper.

Huntsman could easily cost-justify the Flowserveproposal on the basis of the high cost of free-flowingnitrogen the original seals used and the OEM’s pricefor rebuilding the worn seals. “With the cost of nitro-gen and the estimated cost to rebuild the old seals, itwas a wash,” Toups said. “For the same money, wehave new seals,” he added.

While the proposal was wending its way throughthe Huntsman approval process, the compressor wasagain scheduled for a shutdown, for reasons notrelated to seals. Huntsman sped up the approval andasked Flowserve to provide the new seals no laterthan May 2001, only six weeks away.

Rising to the challengeThe long-lead items in a compressor gas seal are theprecision-lapped carbide faces. Flowserve found setsof the proper size in one of its warehouses. Now, therace began in earnest. Designers got involved, partsfabrication started, assembly departments waited forsubassemblies to arrive. The Flowserve organizationmobilized to meet the tight deadline, ultimatelydelivering the seals on time. And, of course,Huntsman Corporation was pleased. “What is mostimpressive about Flowserve is that this was a ‘fromscratch’ project, and they met the deadline,” addedToups. “I know that if I called Stewart right now, hecould be here immediately,” he added.

Rapid service made conditions hectic inFlowserve’s Kalamazoo plant. “We brought in threeor four of Phil Mosher’s seal engineers over a week-end to completely design the seal,” said Kevin Beik,Flowserve’s project manager for compressor gas sealsin North America. “On Monday, we had parts goinginto our system. Tuesday we started manufacturingthe seals,” he added. Then, Marge Nelson,Flowserve’s planner in Kalamazoo, used concurrentmanufacturing methods during the two and a halfweeks needed to manufacture the seals. Engineersprogrammed the NC tools, they designed, built andcommissioned the fixtures to test the seals at actualoperating conditions. This kind of immediate servicecould have built Rome more quickly than historyrecords indicate. ●

6 www.flowserve.com Face to Face

Rome wasn’t built in a dayBut Flowserve got close to building a GasPac seal just that quickly

turnkeysolutions

Nearly every fluid transfer operation thatrelies on a rotating shaft will need a sealto prevent leakage. This truism cer-tainly applies to steam turbines, which

use, in many cases, a seal mechanism called a “car-bon box” to keep live steam inside, where it can douseful work.

The carbon box has a series of carbon ringsaround the turbine shaft. The rings form alabyrinth seal with similar elements on the insideof the seal housing. But, the carbon box is not anabsolute seal. As the rings wear with each rotationof the shaft, the spaces between them open,which increases the leakage rate.

For many years, the phenome-non of slowly increasing ratesof steam leakage from theturbines was an apparentfact of life at CelaneseChemicals in Pampa,Texas. “It’s hard toquantify the life of thecarbon seals. We ranthem until we couldn’tdeal with the leakageanymore. When werepaired them, wefound shaft damagefrom the carbon ele-ments,” said Gary Sugar,reliability specialist at theCelanese plant.

The Pampa facility manufacturesacetic acid and related chemicals in aprocess that depends on turbine-driven pumpsand compressors. Operating on an inlet steampressure of 600 psi, the turbines exhaust steam at150 psi, which is used as process heating elsewherein the plant.

When the weather turns cold, the entire areaaround the turbines is blanketed in a thick whitefog of leakage steam that reduces visibility andmakes operation and maintenance in the imme-diate area difficult.

Maintenance and safetyIt was clear that Celanese wanted to do somethingabout this situation. “In our opinion, steam costwas a justification, along with improved visibility

during the winter months. That, and reliability,”was Sugar’s response when asked about the steamproblem. He explained that the leaking steam alsofinds its way into the bearing housings, where itmixes with the lubricants. The combination ofexcessive steam fog and degraded lubricationresulted in unscheduled turbine outages thatlasted two days or longer.

Inventing technologyFor Celanese, improving turbine reliability wasan important issue. The plant tried replacing the

carbon seals with a compressor gas sealthat had been modified and mar-

keted for steam service. Thisinitiative proved to be less

than adequate for thepurpose.

That’s when Celaneseasked Flowserve forhelp. That help came inthe form of designing,

from scratch, a sealspecifically for the tur-bine problem at Celanese.Thus began the develop-

ment of the GTS seal. Thefinished product achieved

its objectives, as measured bythe acceptance it got at the

Celanese Pampa plant. In its currentincarnation, the GTS seal is a single-car-

tridge design that capitalizes on the recog-nized sealing ability of a metal bellows and the

reliability of wavy-face technology.

Another problem solvedAny industrial steam supply carries suspendedsolids. “The wavy face is significant in terms of sealreliability. Some seals use a spiral groove to createlift. Impurities in the steam can lodge in thegrooves. This leads to premature failure,”explained Sugar. “The first GTS seals wereinstalled in October of 1997 and, except for short-term planned shutdowns, they have been operat-ing continuously ever since without maintenance.Since the original installation, we’ve done sevenmore turbines and the plans are to do two morethis year.” ●

Face to Face www.flowserve.com 7

Safety, energy conservation and

reliability

innovations

Three reasons for developing a new mechanical seal