Nobody wants an unscheduled plant shutdown. The cost of lost production, troubleshooting and paused shipping can be colossal – one project where MCM provided consultation had incurred a loss of $200M following an unscheduled LNG train outage.

Revalidation of trace moisture in dehydration applications is a constant challenge for producers, a resource-intensive procedure that can disrupt online measurement and often delays plant start-up. MCM can help to prevent such damaging events before they occur.

QMI engineers frequently report large discrepancies between online moisture analysers and the portable analysers used for validation. The result is often that nobody knows which measured value to believe, and the plant is operating blind. The risk is high, and the consequences are significant.

MCM’s online hygrometers will enable any plant to come online in the minimum possible time, but for added confidence we also deliver portable measurement solutions that can be used for rapid validation of online process data.

Developed for the natural gas and LNG industries, our Hygrometer Validation System provides a complete package of dry gas purge, master reference hygrometer and a suite of portable hygrometers, allowing confident confirmation of critical zero measurement values in both the portable units and the plant online analysers.

MCM’s ATEX-certified portable hygrometers [See Hazardous Area analysers] are selected because of their rapid speed of response and ability to provide traceable measurement against a verified standard. The Hygrometer Validation System has therefore become the first choice for laboratory operators on projects around the world – a first line of defence for protecting plants from high moisture events, and a key troubleshooting tool for those occasions where process upset cannot be prevented.

Widely used by clients where process gas specifications are at “trace” levels (e.g. <1 ppmV), a single Hygrometer Validation System can support multiple online plant moisture analyser systems. Because of the rapid sensor response of the MCM portable hygrometers, the operator can make many process validation measurements in a short period of time. The total number of MCM portable hygrometers required is flexible and can be specified to suit the plant conditions.