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Treatment plant troubleshooting

Treatment plant troubleshooting

Troubleshooting is a different job from design. A plant that has run acceptably and then stopped has changed in some specific way, and the work is to find the change rather than to redesign around it. Most of what gets replaced after a failure did not need replacing.

The engagement, on one sheet
Investigate
the plant you have, as it runs
4 areas
an investigation looks at
Diagnosis
kept separate from what to do about it
Quoted
before any further work starts

Who arrives here

You are probably here because

If none of these is your situation, it is still worth a conversation: this list is not exhaustive.

  • The plant was fine and now it is not, and nobody can point at what changed
  • Performance has drifted downwards slowly with no single event to blame
  • The same fault keeps returning after being fixed
  • Several people have already given several different explanations
  • There is commercial or regulatory pressure and a decision has to be made quickly

What an investigation looks at.

Lines of enquiry, not conclusions. Which of them matters for your plant is what the investigation establishes.

Line of enquiry01

What actually changed

  • Production changes, new products, new raw materials and new cleaning chemicals
  • Changes of operator, contractor, chemical supplier or dosing regime
  • Maintenance events, replacements and anything that was 'improved' recently
  • Seasonal and temperature effects on a biological process

Line of enquiry02

Whether the fault is real

  • Sampling point, method, preservation and laboratory agreement
  • Instrument calibration and drift
  • Whether the reported failure is a treatment failure or a measurement artefact

Line of enquiry03

The plant as it is running now

  • Every stage walked and observed under real operating conditions
  • Actual flow, load and retention against design
  • Equipment duty, standby condition and anything running that should not be

Line of enquiry04

Narrowing it down

  • Where the plant stops meeting the requirement, established stage by stage
  • Controlled changes, one at a time, with a defined thing to measure
  • What evidence would settle the remaining candidate causes
What an engagement produces, level by level

Problems this usually arrives with.

Talk to an Expert

Bring us the symptom. We will find the cause.

Describe what the plant is doing, in your own words. You do not need to know the cause first.

Talk to an Expert

A specialist calls you and tells you the right next step and its cost.

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