MechChem Africa

MechChem Africa

•

January 2017

ith increasing urbanisation,

the 20

century introduced

process plants to mass-pro-

duce pharmaceuticals, food

and beverages, focusing on optimising cost,

time to market and reliability.

The21

centuryprocessplantisfacedwith

more complex needs. The triple bottom line

requires a solution involving people, prosper-

ity and the planet, with its finite resources,

particularly water.

Process plants concerned with products

forconsumptionarerequiredtomeetincreas-

ingly robust legislation demanding reduced

(or zero) bacterial/spore counts in the final

product.

The challenge is how to manage the

fabrication of new plants and maintain the

old plants to accommodate these changing

operating conditions.

Hygiene is often seen as both as a reputa-

tion and market risk, and as a costly alterna-

tivetocurrentpractices.Realistically,hygienic

welded fabrication will be more challenging

and more costly.

Whilst this puts capital budgets under

pressure, it should ease operational costs, en-

hance productivity and reduce clean-in-place

(CIP) andwater needs. The strategic choice is

business value and risk-driven.

Process plant construction

Process plants include a variety of, typically

stainless steel, components including factory-

made tanks, heat exchangers, columns and

pumps. These are interconnected by pipes.

During construction, fabricated components

are transported to site for assembly. These

are linkedonsiteusing thin-walled (wt<3%D),

small diameter piping. Connection is usually

by welding.

In the first ‘Materials engineering in practice’ column for 2017, Tony Paterson from the School of

Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering at Wits, talks about the work being done to ensure that the

pharmaceuticals and food-grade products coming out of our process plants are safe to ingest.

Left:

The ideal orbital weld for minimising Biofilm formation.

Right:

A manual weld taken from

an operating pharmaceutical plant. This weld is unacceptable by any sanitary standard.

Pictures courtesy of JD Cluett: www.arcmachines.com

Materials engineering in practice:

Hygiene and the process plant challenge

Most connecting pipes are measured

on site, ends prepared, aligned and welded.

Internal weld imperfections in small-bore

pipework are generally inaccessible. Site

welding requires skill, is more difficult to

control, and more difficult to manage for a

variety of reasons.

Biofilm formation and control

Complete sterility of plant, input materials

and water, whilst not a realistic expectation,

is the ideal. In the absence of complete steril-

ity, other methods need to be considered for

plant constructionor refurbishment practices

toeliminateormitigate against bacterial load.

Private sources of water have declined.

Municipality suppliedwater is of inconsistent

quality over time and product inputmaterials

are often shipped fromsources far away from

the process plants.

Biofilms form on exposed surfaces of pro-

cess plant as thin layers of microorganisms

adhering to surfaces. These may be organic

or inorganic, together with the polymers that

they secrete and biofilms can include harmful

bacteria.

Biofilm depth increases with increased

surface roughness, increased temperature

and lower flow speeds and is, therefore,

promoted by occluded and dead areas. One

source of surface roughness and local occlu-

sions are welded joints.

Resulting frombiofilmformation, bacteria

can grow and be released into the product.

Welded joints support biofilm growth

where there is:

• Inadequate penetration – the inner weld

profile leaves crevices (dead areas).

• Over penetration or cauliflowering – the

inner weld profile is proud (dead areas).

• Porosity.

• Cracks.

• Misalignment during manufacturing or

fabrication – occluded areas.

• Surface roughness due towelding process

effects across the width of the heat af-

fected zone (Laser < CMT < TIG/MIG).

CurrentlyCIPmethods areused to reduce the

impact of biofilms, but CIP is not completely

effective as:

• The loss of heat and chemical concentra-

tion over distance reduces effectiveness.

• The process does not clean hidden and

occluded areas.

• CIP requires the extensive use of water.

Manufactured pipes

Manufactured pipes are oval and bow to a

greater or lesser extent. Whilst accepted tol-

erances exist, the impact on welded joints is

significant particularlywith thinwalled pipes.

Pre-programmedorbitalTIGweldingisthe

preferredmethod of joining pipes. It assumes

well-matched faying surfaces because:

• The pre-programmed controlling current

and travel speed has to allow for the im-

pacts on themoltenweldmetal of internal

inert gas pressure, gravity and theoverlap-

ping wall thickness.

• If the faying surface overlap varies, the

current will be either too high or too low

leading to incomplete fusion or to over-

melting leading to poor weld geometry.

Research

Initial research used

E-coli

build-up to char-

acterise the effects of weld processes and

joint geometry. More recent research based

on real plant pipe analysis and a pair of math-

ematical algorithms using an 80% minimum

criterion as suited to orbital welding showed

poor results if randomly aligned, but better if

aligned through themajor axis. This indicated

the likelihood of bacterial build-up at joints.

Whilst the results were far better with

tightertolerances,movingtoahigherstrength

material witha thinnerwall thickness showed

the desirability of extremely low tolerances.

This places huge challenges on manufactur-

ing costs.

Current research is concentrating on site-

based methods of achieving closely matched

faying end surfaces using plastic forming ap-

proaches. The intent is to check effectiveness

using

E-coli

build up as the rating criteria.