Furmanite Heat Treatment technology – a revolutionary approach to PWHT
Furmanite’s new, state-of-the-art technology revolutionizes pre and post-weld heat treatment procedures, and means reduced manpower requirements, reliable record keeping and more accurate temperature controls. Traditional controllers and strip chart recorder equipment has been replaced with new Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software. A single laptop can control multiple consoles, either wired or via a wireless transmitter and stores time and temperature in encrypted form – this data cannot be interfered with. What’s more, this technology free’s up unproductive personnel, removing the need to stand and watch over temperature charts at each heat treatment machine. Additionally, Furmanite’s pre and post weld heat treatment technology precludes the need to wait for all welds to be ready at once to start a cycle, as multiple charts and cycles can be run at various times from a single console.
Real benefit during shutdown
In a shutdown for example, once the PWHT equipment has been set up, the area can be de-manned to avoid congestion issues and allow other work to be carried out in the area. Moreover, the reduced footprint of the consoles (just 60 cms x 65 cms) enables pre and post weld heat treatment work to be carried out in space restricted areas that would not previously have been possible.
Furthermore, as the only PWHT provider with in-house engineering, Furmanite can offer additional support services, such as structural integrity analysis and heat transfer analysis (including pipe flow heating thermal power requirements, temperature gradient determination, thermal finite element analysis (FEA), and vessel or pipe thawing and vessel heating thermal power requirements), as well as custom equipment design to meet specific needs.
