Cost Worth Evaluation of Reliability Centered Maintenance for Electrical Equipment in a Chemical Plant

This paper proposes a maintenance strategy for electrical equipment in a chemical plant from the reliability and cost worth perspective. Two types of the plant downtime cost are modeled. One is the planned downtime cost consisting of opportunity cost and scheduled maintenance cost. The other is the unplanned downtime cost consisting of opportunity cost, plant recovery operation cost, and damage of material loss. A risk of the condition without maintenance is assessed by using the downtime cost model and a modeled reliability curve of the electrical equipment and decision making for optimal frequency of maintenance is given through comparing the cost of scheduled maintenances and the evaluated risk of the unplanned plant shutdown. A demonstration using a simplified chemical plant model shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach