Transocean standardises on FLIR infrared cameras
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Flir Systems product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Dec 2, 2008
The European and African (EAU) operation of Transocean has standardised on FLIR Systems infrared cameras for conditioned-based monitoring.
Transocean installed a FLIR Systems camera on each of its rigs last year.
Last year Transocean provided each of its rigs with its own Flir Systems camera.
Thermal imaging has become a vital part of Transocean's predictive maintenance procedures.
It is a non-contact method that can be used without powering down, allowing the company to maximise its up-time.
For Transocean, having a potential upgrade path for its cameras was also important.
Now, as a result of the merger between Transocean and Globalsantafe (GSF), this technology is being investigated for implementation on the remaining legacy GSF rigs.
Bob Speirs, an operations engineer with Transocean, has previous experience of using infrared for mechanical inspection.
In his previous job, he was called to a gas-processing rig to investigate a glycol pump, which removes water from the gas-stream.
The maintenance team couldn't determine the location of knocking from the unit against the ambient noise on the rig so decided to strip down the pump unit to locate the defect.
Speirs said: 'With my FLIR camera I was able to prevent this unnecessary procedure.
'By looking at the thermal pattern on the second healthy glycol pump and using that as a benchmark, I was soon able to pinpoint the problem to the suction valve.
'A quick examination of the suction valve soon revealed one of the guides was cracked.' The faulty component was swiftly replaced, saving about 12 hours of labour.
One pass of a FLIR Systems camera also proved its worth on a semi-submersible rig survey.
These rigs rely on hydraulic accumulators to stabilise their drilling equipment in the water.
They compensate for the rise and fall in the ocean swells.
These are pressure storage reservoirs in which a non-compressible hydraulic fluid is held under pressure by a neoprene bag filled with nitrogen.
Twenty of these accumulators were used on this particular rig and the FLIR Systems camera demonstrated that the bag on one of these units was exhibiting different thermal characteristics to the others.
Speirs added: 'Further inspection revealed that the bag was actually full of hydraulic fluid rather than nitrogen.
'In other words it had a substantial leak.
'As a result, the accumulator was not doing its dampening job.
'Although there were many other accumulators to compensate for this failure, it was certainly not a problem we would have picked up with the naked eye.'.
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