Citation

Keller AZ, Stipho NA. Reliab. Eng. 1981; 2(4): 271-281.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1981, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0143-8174(81)90003-2

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Availability analysis studies have been carried out on two similar process chlorine production plant at different locations, in Iraq and Switzerland, for differing environmental and operating conditions.

It is demonstrated that standard reliability methods of analysis allow adequate evaluation of availability.

Various probability distributions were fitted to the sub-system and total system data. The Weibull distribution was found to be the most appropriate to describe mean time between failures, the repair times were best fitted with the lognormal distribution. Overall availability using sub-system results was found to be in good agreement with availability calculated using total system data.

The differences in the system efficiencies of both plants are explained using the concept of a 'delay time' related to how fast a plant can be brought back to rated capacity after breakdown.

General conclusions applicable to related process plant are drawn.