Organisations that can learn from their mistakes will advance much quicker and achieve higher levels of accuracy and consistency than organisations who try to work around and hide any issues that occur. The best time to understand a defect is immediately after is has occurred. Information tends to become clouded and lost as time passes, so we need to react quickly in these times and use four of the principles from the Toyota Way:
Steam Joint Preparation
Bearing all of the above in mind, we want to share an incident that happened recently on a project that cost us both time and money to rectify, but will provide a learning experience so it doesn’t happen again.
A steam system was being installed recently where the lads were using Rocol Pipeseal PTFE jointing paste along with flax (hemp) to seal the threaded joints. Pipeseal is suitable for use on steam within temperature range of -50 degrees to +250 degrees. Flax or other substitute fillers can be used on poor fitting joints, however, the jointing compound must be applied to the male thread first, followed by the filler and then another coating of compound so that the filler is captive inside the compound. Unfortunately the first layer of compound was not used in this case and although the system held pressure test without any problems, after three weeks of steam going live, leaks started to appear as the flax dried out. Advice was sought from industry experts and a different jointing compound was recommended (Rocol Steamseal) along with PTFE tape as a filler material. (Steamseal temperature range -20 degrees to +600 degrees). A shutdown had to be arranged as they system was in service and the crew had to work through the night to strip and re-make all affected joints.
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