Refining Community Logo

Comprehensive Reliability Engineering Ensures Lower Lifecycle Costs

“We solved their need to look for better reliability and lower lifecycle costs.”

The field of reliability engineering focuses on dependability in the lifecycle performance of a product– in this case, valves. This practice examines how many valves are installed, as well as how many have valve-related issues that can be contributed to the valve versus the number of years in service. Through reliability engineering formulas, one can determine the reliability rate and the reciprocal in meantime between repair. This is the kind of information that people are looking at nowadays in plants. They want to run their plants longer and more efficiently, and in order to do that they have to have reliable equipment that can support those goals.

ValvTechnologies valve

A few years ago, the severe service valve solutions company ValvTechnologies was approached by two other companies about being part of a team to provide the technical and commercial evaluation of replacing coker valves for a four-drum coker. ValvTechnologies was tasked with providing steam information consumption on its valves, repair cost information, maintenance costs, and onstream meantime between failure data. As part of the bid, the company compiled that data for an extended period of time.

ValvTechnologies was able to provide this exact data in the initial presentations to the refinery client. The client was impressed with the amount of information that ValvTechnologies provided, and as a cherry on top, ValvTechnologies included in their bid the total cost of ownership, including maintenance cost on repair, steam usage, and meantime repair.

The comprehensive data really differentiated ValvTechnologies and as a result, the company was selected for the four drum turnaround. Numbers don’t lie and ValvTechnologies as able to prove its prowess through demonstrated field performance data and cost comparison.


ValvTechnologies is based out of Houston, TX, and takes pride in its U.S.-made products. The company will be exhibiting at RefComm® Galveston and representatives look forward to meeting new folks to learn about what challenges refiners are faced with in their units. Visit them at Booths #8 & 9. ValvTechnologies is also be hosting the Tuesday night Hospitality event from 7-10 pm in Floral A– come by and say hello! For more information about RefComm and to register, visit www.RefComm.com.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Posted by: lindsay

Refining Community