IJ: What better information/data do we need from advanced NDE to improve our engineering assessments of heater coils?
RR: It’s the critical, delicate balance of maintaining both accuracy and inspection coverage. If one or both of these two critical elements is missing, the engineering assessment output is compromised. Damage mechanisms in heater coils can often be localized to a specific region within a coil and the physical dimension of the flaws (i.e. pitting, fretting, etc.) can be very small. Without 100% inspection coverage, a flaw can be missed resulting in premature failure of the coil.
IJ: What further improvements in NDE techniques are needed to provide more and better data for engineering assessments of heaters?
RR: Intelligent pigging technology designed specifically for the fired heater coil inspection application has rapidly advanced over the last few years and continues to do so. Many specialized heaters in chemical and upstream industries contain coils which are 2” diameter. Ultrasonic base intelligent pigging for these small diameter coils is currently in development and expected to be available in a matter of months.