Case Study of an Aluminium tape caused a complete plant stoppage

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Case Study
How an Aluminium tape caused a
complete plant stoppage?

2. Background :
Breakdown are always one of the biggest
obstacles in smooth running of Plants and
leading to financial impact also. If plant
runs smoothly without any breakdown,
profitability increases, and you know that
much better than us. People follow 100s of
maintenance practices to keep their plant
running 24x7 without interruption and
breakdown. But still sometimes few
breakdowns happen in such a way that,
they make us learn many new things and
what to and what not to do during
maintenance practices. This is one such
case study, where the maintenance
activities followed by many plants become
the reason for Breakdown.
On a fine day of Dhuleti, when many of
plant people were celebrating Holi with all
the precautions and eating various sweets
and snacks. A Call came from plant Shift
engineer to his Manager from plant. Call
was “Sir, Jaldi aaiye, Preheater Fan (2750
kW) band ho gaya hai, uski MV drive nahi
chal rahi aur uski wajah se plant bhi band
ho gaya (Sir, please come soon, Preheater
fan (2750 kW) is stopped due to some issue
in MV drive and due to that plant is also
stopped)”.
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How? We will see in coming paragraphs and
Please do not laugh when I say this incident
happened on 2020 Dhuleti. Yes, you heard
it right, on Dhuleti and 2020. Sometimes I
feel breakdown and holiday are
synonymous. Majority of plant breakdown
keeps on happening on Sunday or Holiday.
Seems, it has become a trend.
Incident Details:
Whenever Maintenance engineer hear such
things his heartbeat always goes up. He
asked his shift engineer to check, while he
is on his way to plant from township. He
gathered his team and went to plant to
check the breakdown and start plant
immediately.
After reaching the substation he found out
condition of panel as below.

3. Picture of Panel where flashover took place (1.1)
Little flashover, as you can see in above picture near fuse, which caused the Preheater
MVVFD drive to trip, ultimately causing complete stoppage. Meanwhile replacement of
burn out fuses, busbar, etc was started. Manager also inquired how this flashover
occurred. The engineer shown them the burn out culprit (shown in an image below)
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Picture of the Culprit that caused flashover &
Hence plant stoppage (1.2)

4. How did this Aluminium tape, which was
there at bottom of panel for closing panel
holes, went near to the fuse? So, whenever you are pasting Aluminium
tape in any panel just see, what if this tape
glue weakens and it come out, it should not
come in contact with any power or control
circuit, which can ultimately create a flash-
over and an unnecessary breakdown.
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The panel was of MVVFD Drive for 3000 kW
6.6 kV Motor, and it has 4 nos fan of 3.7 kW
for cooling. And they were used for cooling
of drive and were blowing air from inside of
panel to outside. Due to this a negative
pressure was created. Now the Aluminium
tape, which are normally used to close
unused holes in panel, was pasted in this
drive during at the time of commissioning.
And if the tape glue quality is not good or if
the tape is not pasted after removing dust
from surface, Aluminium tape can come
out from the surface after some months or
year.
Precautions to be taken:
You can still imagine how a 100 Rs
Aluminium tape caused damage of lacs to
this plant. So, we can learn from here.
Always do “Hazard Identification & Risk
assessment” (HIRA) while doing any work or
any modification in Panels or System.
Root Cause:
Now due to negative pressure, the
Aluminium tape which loses it glue or not
properly pasted, come up and encountered
power fuse (in image 1.1) and ultimately
caused breakdown. However, the
breakdown was not major, and plant
started was within 5-6 hours of accident.

5. CONTACT INFORMATION
301/2/306, Silverline Complex,Opposite BBC
Tower,Sayajigunj,Vadodara - 390 005,
Gujarat, India.
bdm@systemprotection.in
www.systemprotection.in
+91-265-2225137