Costly Lessons Learned from Inspection Pitfalls of Coke Drums

Conference:

Due to severe thermomechanical loads imposed by their normal operations, coke drums typically experience numerous cracks and bulges during their lifetime. The methods that are relied upon to inspect drums have limitations that must be understood in order to avoid costly loss of containment and unplanned shutdowns. In this presentation, we review three case studies in which limitations associated with three different inspection methods have led to two major leaks and one near-miss.

Dr. Mahmod Samman is the president of Houston Engineering Solutions. He has thirty years of industry experience mostly in damage assessment, repair, and life extension of coke drums. His state-of-the-art techniques in this field are utilized around the world. A licensed professional engineer in Texas, he has a Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Duke University.