A two week seal repair turnaround for an unplanned outage on a refrigeration compressor train using Kaydon Oil Seal (K-MOS) oil seals. Typical seal repair lead times are six to eight weeks.
Client challenge
An international chemical manufacturer’s Siemens Compressor train had to be closed down because of unacceptable seal oil leakage to sour oil drain. To compound the problem, no serviceable spare seal units were available.
Our response
We were sent the Kaydon seals from both compressors. Our evaluation showed that all four were:
- Badly coked on the process side surfaces
- Coated internally with hot oil residue
- All seals had clearly run hot
We repaired and rebuilt the seals with:
- New outboard carbon bushes
- New inboard carbon faces
- Re-coated and re-lapped shoulders
- New elastomers and springs
The seals were also:
- Dynamically tested
- Returned to site within one week
Benefits
- Compressor performance was restored in only 2 weeks
- Unacceptable production losses were minimised