Risk analysis for clean and sustainable production in a urea fertilizer industry

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a fuzzy methodology approaches based framework for carrying the risk analysis of a real industrial system of a urea fertilizer industry located in northern part of India.

Design/methodology/approach

Petri Net approach was applied for representing the series-parallel arrangement of the considered system. Various failure causes related to different subsystems or equipment of the considered system were listed under FMEA approach and their Risk Priority Number was tabulated. Further, to overcome the drawbacks of traditional FMEA approach in risk ranking fuzzy FMEA and grey relation analysis (GRA) approaches were applied within traditional FMEA approach and the ranking results were compared for better and effective decision making of risky components.

Findings

The proposed framework has overcome the drawbacks of tradition FMEA approach in an effective and efficient manner. Causes AC7, CL3, ST2, DR3 and NR3 of centrifugal compressor, hot heat exchanger, ammonia convertor reactor, cold condenser and ammonia separator have been identified as the most critical failure causes of the considered system.

Originality/value

The proposed framework has been tested with its application on an ammonia synthesis system of the considered process industry. The risk ranking results would be highly useful in developing a planned maintenance policy for the considered system which further results in improving the system availability.

Citation

Panchal, D., Mangla, S.K., Tyagi, M. and Ram, M. (2018), "Risk analysis for clean and sustainable production in a urea fertilizer industry", International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 35 No. 7, pp. 1459-1476. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJQRM-03-2017-0038