A trayed column at an operating facility suffered a loss of containment incident and was shut down. The damage to the steel is thought to have been caused by loose tray components which rattled around and eventually wore through the shell. An initial repair plan involving welded repairs was proposed. This plan would entail a field post weld heat treat (PWHT) due to the process environment of the vessel. Upon further developing the PWHT plan it was determined that this approach was costly and would have excessive lost profit opportunity (LPO) due to the time it would take to execute and the criticality of this vessel to plant operations. Instead, a second approach involving no field welding was devised, vetted, fabricated, and implemented. The facility was able to restart the process, saving several days of production. A permanent repair or replacement will be planned and implemented at the next planned shutdown.

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