Yara Fertiliser Plant

Customer Success Story

India, February 2023 – VISICS was implemented at the YARA fertiliser plant in Uttar Pradesh, India, to achieve real-time confined space monitoring across three tower locations during their 30-day outage with additional monitoring stations for managers to have an overview of the work being performed.

The design

During this turnaround, the VISICS system was monitoring 3 multi-levelled confined space locations with gas detection, in addition to the external monitoring of a 105 meter tower being painted. For this job, VISICS deployed 4 manway systems, 1 monitoring station and 3 people. In addition, 2 monitoring stations were set up at strategic management locations on site for a continuous overview of the work being performed.

Exceptional outcomes

1. Early detection of Ammonia gas presence in one of the UREA Reactors, while people were present inside the confined space.

During the project a VISICS Operator noticed a spike in the NH3 reading and alerted a the Customer Field Officer and the VISICIS Field Operator.

As the gas reading continued to rise, the space was remotely evacuated using the Alarm Unit and entry was stopped until the gas returned to safe working values.

The customer confirmed the alarm readings were accurate and later confirmed re-entry into the space.

VISICS vs. ‘the old fashioned way’

Khemraj Dureja, General Manager of Maintenace at YARA commented
“contractors feel safe inside the reactors more than ever before because of the VISICS monitoring system and the live gas detection.”
2. Live vigilance of heavy rigging of overflow pipe inside 45M height urea reactor where space is very limited.
3. Identification of several safety trends that were able to be addressed during toolbox sessions; daily.
For Contractor Supervisor Harsh Patel, “This information was invaluable and allowed us to easily address any safety matters immediately, keeping our people safe.”
4. Management visibility of all confined space jobs from a central location, making it easy for supervisors to manage the job.
Jignesh Bhadja, Deputy Manager of Planning and Reliability at YARA,
explained that having a central monitoring area for management allowed him to benchmark his planning to ensure the project ran smoothly, without delay.