The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras has signed an agreement with Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOC) to improve the efficiency of operation in its plants.
The high-temperature steel pipelines (tubes) in refineries have a design life of around one lakh operating hours but companies do not have the technology to accurately identify when they should be replaced.
At present, Indian refineries depend on experts from abroad to assess the ‘creep’ in the tubes.
High cost
The cost of re-tubing is very high, and the expense incurred on bringing foreign experts runs to several crores of rupees, explained Krishnan Balasubramaniam, head of Centre for Non-Destructive Evaluation and Dean of Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research. “The MoU will help enhance productivity, increase efficiency and reduce cost,” he said, adding that tube maintenance was an important safety concern for industries. The institute has developed a robotic system “very similar to diagnostics in medicines using X-ray and ultrasound techniques” to look inside the tubes and check for abnormalities.
“Companies want on-demand affordable inspection systems for tubes. We would want to identify the problems at least two years earlier to maintain the safety of the plants,” Mr. Balasubramaniam said. The prototype developed by the institute has been tested in IOCL plant and the institute is in the process of making an industrial grade robotic system.
