A New Model For Reliability Centered Maintenance In Petroleum Refineries

Refiners today operate their equipment for prolonged periods without shutdown. This is primarily due to the increased pressures of the market resulting in extended shutdown-to-shutdown intervals. This places extreme demands on the reliability of the plant equipment. The traditional methods of reliability assurance, like Preventive Maintenance, Predictive Maintenance and Condition Based Maintenance become inadequate in the face of such demands. The alternate approaches to reliability improvement, being adopted the world over are implementation of RCFA programs and Reliability Centered Maintenance. However refiners and process plants find it difficult to adopt this standardized methodology of RCM mainly due to the complexity and the large amount of analysis that needs to be done, resulting in a long drawn out implementation, requiring the services of a number of skilled people. These results in either an implementation restricted to only few equipment or alternately, one that is non-standard. The paper presents the current models in use, the core requirements of a standard RCM model, the alternatives to classical RCM, limitations in the existing model, classical RCM and available alternatives to RCM and will then go on to present an ‗Accelerated‘ approach to RCM implementation, that, while ensuring close conformance to the standard, does not place a large burden on the implementers

Non-destruct|ve testing of non-metallic materials using microwaves

The motivatitni for" the present work is from .a project sanctioned by TSRO. The work involved the development of a quick and reliable test procedure using microwaves, for tflue inspection of cured propellant samples and a method to monitor the curing conditions of propellant mix undergoing the curing process.Normal testing CHE the propellant samples involvecuttimg a piece from each carton and testing it for their tensile strength. The values are then compared with standard ones and based on this result the sample isaccepted or rejected. The tensile strength is a measure ofdegree of cure of the propellant mix. But this measurementis a destructive procedure as it involves cutting of the sample. Moreover, it does not guarantee against nonuniform curing due to power failure, hot air-line failure,operator error etc. This necessitated the need for the development of a quick and reliable non-destructive test procedure.

A Data Mining Approach for the Identification of Adverse Drug Events (ADE) resulting from Drug-Drug Interactions (DDI) to improve pharmacovigilance

In the current study, epidemiology study is done by means of literature survey in groups identified to be at higher potential for DDIs as well as in other cases to explore patterns of DDIs and the factors affecting them. The structure of the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) database is studied and analyzed in detail to identify issues and challenges in data mining the drug-drug interactions. The necessary pre-processing algorithms are developed based on the analysis and the Apriori algorithm is modified to suit the process. Finally, the modules are integrated into a tool to identify DDIs. The results are compared using standard drug interaction database for validation. 31% of the associations obtained were identified to be new and the match with existing interactions was 69%. This match clearly indicates the validity of the methodology and its applicability to similar databases. Formulation of the results using the generic names expanded the relevance of the results to a global scale. The global applicability helps the health care professionals worldwide to observe caution during various stages of drug administration thus considerably enhancing pharmacovigilance

Sequential interactions of Silver-silica nanocomposite (Ag-SiO2NC) with cell wall, metabolism and genetic stability of Psedomonas aeruginosa, a multiple antibiotic resistant bacterium

The study was carried out to understand the effect of silver-silica nanocomposite (Ag-SiO2NC) on the cell wall integrity, metabolism and genetic stability of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a multiple drugresistant bacterium. Bacterial sensitivity towards antibiotics and Ag-SiO2NC was studied using standard disc diffusion and death rate assay, respectively. The effect of Ag-SiO2NC on cell wall integrity was monitored using SDS assay and fatty acid profile analysis while the effect on metabolism and genetic stability was assayed microscopically, using CTC viability staining and comet assay, respectively. P. aeruginosa was found to be resistant to β-lactamase, glycopeptidase, sulfonamide, quinolones, nitrofurantoin and macrolides classes of antibiotics. Complete mortality of the bacterium was achieved with 80 μgml-1 concentration of Ag-SiO2NC. The cell wall integrity reduced with increasing time and reached a plateau of 70 % in 110 min. Changes were also noticed in the proportion of fatty acids after the treatment. Inside the cytoplasm, a complete inhibition of electron transport system was achieved with 100 μgml-1 Ag-SiO2NC, followed by DNA breakage. The study thus demonstrates that Ag-SiO2NC invades the cytoplasm of the multiple drug-resistant P. aeruginosa by impinging upon the cell wall integrity and kills the cells by interfering with electron transport chain and the genetic stability