A three-day course, running alongside Oil and Gas Africa 2012, will cover detection, identification and prevention of in-service damage mechanisms
According to Vanessa Sealy-Fisher, President of the Corrosion Institute of Southern Africa (CorrISA), corroding infrastructure is costing the South African economy around five per cent of gross national product (GNP). She added, however, that corrosion costs can be cut by up to 25 per cent if proper inspections are carried out by industries.
CorrISA is hosting the three-day course that will run alongside the Oil & Gas Africa Expo and Conference at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 13 to 15 March 2012. Sealy-Fisher says the course will specifically focus on damage mechanisms occurring in the refinery and petrochemicals industries.
“These industries should know why certain damage mechanisms occur and how to repair them, but more importantly how to detect and prevent them, to keep costs to a minimum,” she said.
The Refinery Damage Mechanisms course will be presented by Mike Holland who runs his own consulting practice. Holland specialises in equipment integrity management, materials advisory services, failure investigation and failure prevention. He has more than 25 years’ experience in the industry and has lectured around the world on integrity management for the past seven years.
“The principles of Risk Based Inspection (RBI) are universally accepted within the refinery and petrochemical industries as ‘best practice’. This is particularly relevant when it comes to managing the integrity of pressurised equipment in large plants,” said Holland. “It is important for people working in these industries to have knowledge of the various damage mechanisms that plants and equipment may be susceptible to, so they can conduct a meaningful RBI analysis.”
Holland says the course aims to give plant maintenance, inspection, technical, and engineering personnel a significant understanding of most of the damage mechanisms they are likely to encounter in practice, and provide pertinent inspection techniques to detect these.