Development of a Maintenance Strategy for Centrifugal Pumps

E. G. Saturday; R. Abbey

E. G. Saturday Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria
R. Abbey Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Keywords: Centrifugal pumps, Critical components, Maintenance strategy, Reliability-centred maintenance

Abstract

In this work, a maintenance strategy was developed for centrifugal pumps. The strategy involves running the centrifugal pump for a predetermined period and the mechanical seal is taken out for maintenance and reused. The period of first usage of the mechanical seal depends on the level of debris in the fluid (low level, medium level and high level). The centrifugal pumps of an oil multinational company based in Rivers state was used as a case study. The cost implications of the existing maintenance strategy and the developed maintenance strategy were evaluated and compared. Selected reliability-centred maintenance tools were also applied to assess the level of criticality of the various components. It was observed that the impeller, the mechanical seal and the shaft are the most critical components of the centrifugal pump with relative criticality values of 16.80, 15.08 and 13.35 respectively. In applying the new maintenance strategy, it is possible to run the centrifugal pump for up to 11 days, 8 days and 5 days respectively for the three different cases of fluid before the mechanical seal is reused. Reused mechanical seals on the average can run to failure in 9 days, 7 days and 4.5 days respectively. Applying the new maintenance strategy leads to reduction in maintenance cost of the mechanical seal between N13.6 million to N24.4 million annually. The developed maintenance strategy can be applied to other devices which has components that fail often.

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