Simplified flange face machining

How much must you drain and gas-free before you can machine your pipe flanges? Or to put the other way around; how little drain and gas-freeing can you come away with? It is Friday and some thoughts from the week have gone by.

The AOGV can isolate smaller segments of process systems for upgrades like flange face machining. It is trivial but in order to get to a flange face in the processing system, some spools or equipment have to come out. In order to get the spool or piece of equipment out a safe and zero energy zone has to be created. This is exactly the purpose of the AOGV, insert a blind spade in a live process system creating positive isolation. The picture above is the flange below the tank in the animation.

Once the zero-energy zone is created, the process fluid is evacuated, and the flange face machining can be performed with standard field-proven machinery for such operations.

After freshening up the flanged pieces of the piping elements can be refitted to the live piping system. With an alternative process flow path, the plant is still running, with a capacity down for a shorter time, and the overall throughput of the plant is kept higher!

The future ambition for the AOGV is to be able to machine the face of the flange without draining and gas-freeing; call for a discussion of the status.

The AOGV can be fitted with a pipe plugging system which will facilitate access to the flange face. Repair the flanges with minimal downtime and loss in terms of plant preparation and reinstatement.