31
November
2016
HYDROCARBON
ENGINEERING
C
onfined space entry is a necessary part of maintaining the integrity
of industrial assets. Confined spaces occur in a wide range of
industries in the form of storage tanks, silos, reaction vessels,
enclosed drains, sewers, pits, cargo tanks, ductwork and more.
Inspection of these spaces is necessary to ensure that they can adequately
contain any material that is held within them, and also to ensure the
structural integrity to avoid collapse or similar mechanical failures.
Quality
Manually accessing confined spaces requires highly skilled technicians that
are qualified to negotiate complex, hazardous environments. They typically
require a significant amount of access equipment and also need to detect
and record anomalies whilst in those demanding environments. Quality
issues would naturally arise in such a working environment.
Safety
Confined spaces are also inherently unsafe. Hazards include asphyxiation,
falling from height, exposure to poisonous gases, fumes or vapours, liquid or
flowing solids filling the space, fires and explosions, and hot conditions. The
safety issues related to confined space entry are extensive.
Business
Accessing confined spaces requires the shutdown of a plant for relatively
long periods of time due to the complexity of the task. This, of course, has a
business impact, as uptime means money. Reducing downtime has huge
advantages. Additionally, both a safety and business concern, manual access
to confined spaces is assumed to cause integrity damage. The process of
YOURASSET
Colin Hickey, Sky-Futures, UK,
highlights the
benefits of using unmanned aerial vehicles for
confined space inspection and assuring asset
integrity of critical infrastructure.
