How to Manage Your Obsolete Process Equipment
How can Cross help with your aging equipment?
As your process equipment begins to age it becomes harder to operate your facility. Finding technicians and engineers who are familiar with the equipment becomes difficult. Older equipment doesn’t work as efficiently or reliably as it once did and finding replacement parts is a real challenge. The experts at Cross Process Solutions are here to help support you.
Training
Because newly trained engineers and technicians often aren’t familiar with older equipment or software, it can be hard to find talent who knows how to work on or operate older systems. Our team has an abundance of experience in both cutting-edge and legacy systems. Let us help with the headache of training new team members on the technical aspects of your process control and measurement equipment.
Identification and Prioritization of Obsolete Equipment
With hundreds of gages, valves, vents, and control systems in your facility, it can be hard to keep up with what is obsolete. Our team can come onsite and provide an audit of your equipment to let you know what is no longer supported. Then we work with you to determine which pieces are critical to your process and create a priority list to plan for replacement over time.
For example, we offer “TOP” or Tank Optimization Surveys. To complete these surveys, a Cross expert will come onsite to inspect all the tank accessories in your facility and assess their operation and condition. After the survey, your team is presented with a detailed report outlining what was found and what steps we recommend taking to improve the safety and efficiency of your operation.
Once your valve is specified and ready to be installed, don’t forget to include the following components along with the control valve. First, you need a properly sized strainer somewhere upstream of the control valve. Dirt and debris are control valve killers. Second, if you are installing a pneumatic control valve, you must put a filter regulator on the main air supply line.. our team recommends at minimum, a 25 micron filter but a 5 micron is preferred. This serves dual purposes. The filter regulator will protect the positioner from fine particles of dirt that can clog the small air ports inside of the positioner. It also protects the positioner and actuator from over pressurization. Many control valve actuators use lower pressure air supply than standard plant air.
New Equipment
If some of your equipment isn’t functional, Cross offers a wide range of repair services for your process maintenance needs. We have factory-trained service technicians with years of experience who can troubleshoot and repair your equipment quickly and cost-effectively. Each repair comes with a report on what was done for your records. We also save all repairs in our calibration and repair system, should you need to access them in the future. We can help with:
- Low-Pressure Relief Valves and Vents
- Valves
- Flame Banks
- Blanket Gas Regulators
- Actuators
Because it is often hard to find replacement parts, maintaining obsolete equipment can be difficult and expensive. In many cases, due to the high cost of ownership, it’s more economical to replace old equipment with a newer model. As an authorized distributor for a number of top manufacturers, Cross can help you to identify the best replacement for your obsolete equipment. Because we work with process manufacturers all the time we can quickly identify the part needed so you don’t waste time researching online. After your purchase, we are there to provide support with installation, start-up, and commissioning. If needed we can also provide training so your team is up to speed on how to operate your new equipment.
Whether you know you have obsolete equipment in your facility or you want help in determining what is no longer supported, contact us today. Our process solutions experts are here to help you keep your facility operating as safely and efficiently as possible.
