Impedance pipe heating is one of the most reliable and effective methods to heat pipe and requires little to no maintenance. Because little maintenance is required, we often find that the system is installed and virtually forgotten. Although regular maintenance is not required, it is recommended that an annual inspection be conducted. The Fall of the year is often a good time for this, particularly, for users that have systems operating outdoors in inclement weather and cold temperatures. For those that are finishing up the high temperatures of the summer months, this is a good time to look for any heat related impact on the system. And for those that have systems that are under roof it is just good business and processing practice to conduct an annual inspection to avoid any unforeseen process interruptions.
Having said this, when conducting your annual inspections what should you be paying attention too? Here are a few things to consider:
- Build your annual inspection into your normal and routine inspection or maintenance program so it is conducted at roughly the same interval each year. This can be dictated by the season depending on whether you have an outdoor system or not. Invariably there is a logical time in your plant location and process flow that makes the most sense. Just be sure to put it on your schedule.
- Be sure to keep good records of your initial system installation as the drawings, layouts and notes will prove invaluable if and when any questions arise. These records will also prove important if you have to relocate any sections of the system or change any of the process. Maintaining good records will insure cost effective and timely changes if and when they are required.
- Inspect the entire system including in particular your transformer, controls and monitoring components of the system. When conducting your inspection of the functional elements be sure to cover power connections, cabling and terminations throughout the system. For very expansive impedance pipe heating systems that are located high off the ground and not easily accessible you most probably will want to schedule your inspection of cables and terminations for when personnel have other reasons to access these difficult locations. Through good planning at the time of installation, the terminations can be placed so they can be easily viewed from the ground. This can make the annual inspection of these elements easy and efficient.
- In locations where you have insulation be sure to inspect it to make sure there are no voids where employees might come in contact with the hot pipe. Voids in the insulation can cause cold spots and reduce the operational efficiency of the system.
- This is also a good time to reconfirm that you have the correct spare parts on hand in the off chance they will be needed. It’s rare that they will be needed however to avoid any interruption to process flow it makes good business sense to keep select spare parts on hand.
You have made a good choice in impedance pipe heating which provides your operation with a pipe heating system with a long service life, minimal maintenance requirements and outstanding control of process temperatures. So it only makes good operations and business sense to schedule an annual inspection to ensure that you achieve performance reliability and maximize the return your investment in impedance pipe heating.
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