Despite the best efforts of midstream companies, accidents happen that can cause not only severe injuries to workers and citizens, but cost millions of dollars in both repairs and lost income.

Although it is not always the culprit, one aspect that has been overlooked as being at least partially responsible for unplanned downtime has been ineffectual gauges. According to Tony Maupin, senior instrumentation engineer at WIKA Instrument LP, approximately 25% of the gauges that the company inspected as part of its Full Audit Service Team (FAST) program for refineries and chemical plants failed or were in the process of failing. According to the company, this figure can be expanded to 60% to 65% of gauges when counting those found to be just below the failure level. In this case, these gauges are providing accurate readings but will start to fail soon.

WIKA is a manufacturer of pressure gauges and does informal audits for plants and make recommendations for improvements based on these free audits. “What we found was that a high number of these gauges were in trouble to some degree. They have either failed completely, are destroyed or are exhibiting signs that are going to lead to failure very soon,” Maupin tells Midstream Business.

Part of this problem is that gauges receive very little attention from operators, who are focused on more expensive equipment such as pumps and compressors. But this oversight has led to larger failures related to more expensive equipment when the gauges have provided incorrect readings or failed entirely. He noted that many times these incidents were the impetus for companies calling WIKA requesting an audit, which involves sending in a team of engineers to do an extensive analysis of the pressure-gauge population.

These errors aren’t just related to gauge failures, but misapplied gauges or ones not meant for the application or pressure for which they’re being used. “A lot of gauges may have started out being correctly applied, but there was a failure, and someone on another shift grabs a gauge that has a different pressure range and installs it anyway,” Maupin said.

He also noted that there instances of gauges being damaged by high temperature, vibrations or pulsations without the proper dampening components being installed. “This is the main source of failure that we see—gauges that have been vibrated to the point where the internals have disintegrated or gauges vibrating or pulsing so violently that you can’t read them.”

According to WIKA, one of the big reasons for such failures occurring is because of the large amount of turnover taking place in the industry as experienced workers retire and are replaced with less experienced workers.

“These workers will be well-versed on how to operate the pumps or compressors or the different valve technologies that they have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, but pressure gauges are just not seen as important in many cases; companies view mechanical gauges as providing back-up readings to those on a transmitter,” he said.

Because gauges are somewhat of an afterthought, when a failure is noted, they are often replaced with incorrect technologies similar to replacing a light bulb with the wrong wattage, which can lead to power outages or fires.

“What we do with the FAST Program is not just show them which gauges are failing or about to fail and provide them recommendations. We also want to help them manage their storeroom so that there are fail safes built in so that the wrong gauges aren’t installed in the first place,” Maupin said.

WIKA’s audits are undertaken using best practices that the company has discovered, sometimes even from a company they are auditing. “There are a lot of companies that do not follow their own specifications when it comes to pressure measurements,” he added.

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