CUSTOMER:  Western Mining Corporation Phosphate Hills Australia

PROBLEM: Removal, overhaul and reinstallation of 970 critical flanges, during a scheduled outage at the Phosphate Hills fertiliser plant in Queensland.

SOLUTION: As part of a Joint Integrity Management scheme, a 20-strong Furmanite team (comprising project manager, safety co-ordinator, engineer, leading hands and 15 technicians) undertook the project in less than four weeks, including torquing/tensioning 970 LG/SM groove, ring joint (RTJ), ANSI and metal-to-metal face flanges.

The work scope included inspecting and overhauling steam traps; inspecting, lapping and overhauling gate and globe valves; working on components in the syngas and turbine compressor and on the refrigeration skid (under WMC team leaders); removing and reinstating 170 PSV valves; and inspecting all critical joints.

Furmanite (which has had an on-going presence at the plant since 2001 supplying core services including leak sealing, controlled bolting, hot tapping, in-situ machining and general fitting as well as engineering advice) was also involved in preparation for the outage during the 6 months prior, comprising the bill of materials for all vessels, PSVs and exchangers in the ammonia plant.  Two Furmanite technicians were deployed on a two weeks on/two weeks off roster to undertake the work, from January to June.

OUTCOME: The work was successfully completed within a total of 4,852 hours on day shift and 768 hours on night shift, with zero leaks reported on start-up.