At the September technology evening Johan van Niekerk, regional manager for Fisher, Africa Southern Region, walked us through partial stroke testing of safety valves. Partial stroke testing (or PST) is a technique used in a safety instrumented system to allow the user to test a percentage of the possible failure modes of a shutdown valve without the need of physically closing the valve.
Alvin Seitz presents Johan van Niekerk with the SAIMC presenter’s certificate
When safety valves remain in one position over an extended long period of time without any mechanical movement, these have a tendency of getting stuck in one position, and pose the risk of not operating on demand. This can result in severe impact to the functionality of a safety system with catastrophic effect to operating personnel, plant equipment, and environment.
The benefits of using PST are not limited to simply the safety performance but gains can also be made in the production performance of a plant and the capital cost of a plant.
Partial stroke testing is an accepted petroleum industry standard technique and these together with safety instrumented systems have to comply with IEC61508 & IEC 61511. PST equipment need to be certified by TÜV Rheinland, a global provider of technical, safety and certification services and Excida for local IA certification.
The SAIMC wishes to thank Johan for his interactive and entertaining presentation which was well received.
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