How a Chemical Firm Improved Safety While Cutting Gas Panel Maintenance Time by 75%

Do gas panels need a lot of maintenance and replacing at your plant? Here's how one firm used our Gas Distribution Program to fix the problem.

At many Alberta industrial facilities, operators and maintenance crews cope with a gas distribution system that's tricky to control and time-consuming to service. Working with a patchwork of subsystems and components seems like a fact of life. So too does frequent gas panel replacement, wasting a bit of gas with each change of supply bottles, and production slowdowns when lines need repair.

That was the case for a leading chemical company served by Swagelok. The company had over 200 gas lines delivering specialty gases to hundreds of points of use for research and development. Leadership was concerned about preventing leaks of hazardous gases, as well as rising maintenance and gas panel replacement costs.

An average of 10% of their gas panels had to be replaced each year, at an average of cost of $58,500 per year. Over five years, that's $292,500.

But panel replacement costs were just one piece of the puzzle. Leadership needed broad insight and advice to make strategic choices about things like:

• Safety—What are our risks right now regarding leaks of gases that can be harmful to operators, equipment, and environment?
• Reliability/uptime—When our gas distribution system has an issue, what's the impact on work downstream, like laboratory tests, or equipment such as analyzers?
• Time/resources—What resources do we have to build and maintain gas distribution systems onsite? Will in-house knowledge and expertise change in future as our senior personnel retire?
• Costs—Taking into account all of the above, what are our total costs related to our gas distribution system? How will various changes affect total costs?

Swagelok gas distribution program advisors identified the opportunity to standardize gas panel design throughout the system. They found various components had been added over the years for purging and venting, creating unnecessary complexity. Removing critical relief valves via tapered, threaded connections during maintenance required significant labour time. And the customer’s use of different gas panels from multiple suppliers made planning ahead for replacement difficult.

The customer embraced Swagelok's advice. Among other steps, they installed Swagelok source inlets and gas panels to establish reliable connection points between high-pressure source gases and the rest of the distribution system.

The first image here shows a cylinder connection including a well-supported valve, to reduce strain on tubing and connections.

The configuration of the new panels enhanced operator safety and provided easier access and removal of critical relief valves. This helped reduce overall gas panel maintenance time by 75%. It also reduced its carbon footprint by eliminating leaks and frequent panel replacement. 

The second image here shows Swagelok SGP panels in a bottle shelter. The panels provide the first pressure reduction point in the system and include filtration, isolation, relief and pressure indication in a compact, modular design.

The standardized Swagelok panels' common design footprint also allowed the engineering team to reduce labour hours and improve overall efficiency. And the Swagelok panels can be serviced rather than replaced, helping the customer save over $52,000 every five years based on a 10% annual replacement rate with the old panels. That's a decrease of 17.77%.

Learn more

Edmonton Valve invites you to learn about the new Swagelok Gas Distribution Program. Combining services and tailored products, it's designed to be a cost-effective way to upgrade plants' gas distribution systems. Get details here:

(Need technical help right now? Call our 24x7 Field Advisory Services On-Call Technical Support: 780-237-7109.)

Also see:

• An Inside Look at Swagelok's Pressure Reducing Regulators
• 'As Free as the Air?' Not with a Gas Leak
• 7 Facts About Regulators from a Swagelok Engineer
• Two Ways to Find the Right Size Pressure Regulator for the Job