Asset Integrity Management in Mature Process Plants

Several plants in Brazil have mature assets or were built with equipment relocated from decommissioned facilities. Added to this finding, there is the fact that the culture of process safety is a topic little explored in the country, which has only recently gained attention from companies. Since catastrophic accidents are not very common, any accident related to the process can lead to very significant losses in terms of damage to facilities and loss of human and social capital. In mature process plants, these points are even more delicate, and these are typically facilities whose organization may not yet have developed an effective integrity management program. Nevertheless, it is verified the fact that the assets of these plants are often already in conditions close to the end of their residual lifetime. Therefore, the present work aims to develop a checklist to assess integrity management and identify possible failures in the integrity management of a mature asset, taking as a reference good engineering practices, Regulatory Standard 13 (NR 13), API 579, 580, 581 and HSE (Health and Safety Executive) and other relevant standards.