| dc.description.abstract | This paper reports the experiences acquired through the modifications and improvements implemented in the manufacture, construction and assembly of the oil flow centrifugal pumps. A Brazilian oil pipeline pumping capacity expansion, on Rio Grande do Sul – South Region of Brazil, was conceived aiming at refinery processing increase project from 20,000 m³/day to 30,000 m³/day, besides changing the product profile from processed product to national high viscosity national oils. Due to this reason, a new pump park and a new intermediate pump station have been erected. Thus, the oil received by a tanker and stored at the first pump park should be sending through a 97 km long and 560 mm diameter oil pipeline. In order to get such oil flow done, 03 new main pumps have been installed at the first pump park, one of them being a stand-by one, and other 03 pumps at second pump park, one of them being also a standby. During the startup of news pumps, high vibration levels were observed in the rotors and in the equipment structures. The values defined by the manufacturer for equipment alarm and shutdown were, respectively, 50.0 µm and 75.0 µm, measured on the pump rotors in the bearing region. However, the global vibration levels of the pumps reached 110.0 µm during the startup attended by the manufacturers. The equipment warranty period started after that, and a detailed activity planning was drawn up with the purpose of keeping the new pumps running at the lowest possible operational risk and avoiding a production reduction at Refinery. Simultaneously, various actions were taken in order to identify the vibration sources and reduce its intensity to the lowest possible values. After equipment modifications, median vibration values at 15.0 µm were obtained. The logistics adopted in this process and the activities carried out to eliminate the causes of the high pump vibrations prevented an approximately U$ 25 million loss for the Customer and ensured an expressive increase in the equipment operational continuity reliability. | en |
