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Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

(OP)
From a process safety perspective, how important it is to have the piping tag number stencilled on the piping external surface in a process plant?

RE: Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

Life68,
Do you really mean the Line Number?

If you do mean the Line Number then you would need to justify the cost of putting the Line Number on each line.
The cost would require; a serious study of where to put the number; how many times the number would be required on each line; the method of application; the validation of the correctness of each number-to-line; and the long term maintenance of the numbers.

Sometimes its possible to do all the right things and still get bad results

RE: Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

As long as valves and equipment are properly tagged, I don't personally see much need for identifying line numbers on piping. There may be cases where it is justified, but in my experience, it's not something that's commonly done.

RE: Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

Disagree respectfully.
As some cost of adding the line ID on the pipes, it can be useful for the safety O&M activities and any future engineering work, especially for a complicate unit with multiple process piping. Many safety incidents occurred as the wrong pipes were marked for the maintenance work.
You can order the pipe ID labels and wrap or stick it on the pipes.

RE: Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

Will the facility ever be modified or upgraded? If yes, can it be certain that operations will update the line tags?

In any case, lines should be walked down from source to destination to confirm that real world matches the documentation prior to any work being started.

Yes, it can be a pain/difficult to do this but failure to do this can cause large problems down the road.

RE: Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

If you have to reply on correct labelling of lines for safety then you may want rethink how the system is designed. Safety should not rely on the operators checking line numbers. Consider valve interlocks etc.

RE: Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

From a construction point of view it might be nice, but usually this is the isometric number.

Can't say I've even seen this in practice and dubious about it's benefit, if any, on process safety.

Making sure each valve and instrument is correctly tagged is an ongoing issue in many plants - Tags get lost, damaged, valves and instruments replaced or moved, but never re-tagged. This is far more important than the line number.

Why do you ask?
what's your view?

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

RE: Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

I wouldn't ever bother with putting line/tag numbers on pipe runs. Use ANSI A13.1 for pipe marking and hang tags on components as others have suggested.

Here is how it looks like in real life:

RE: Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

I can only imagine the nightmare of maintaining the database with all the pipeline numbers/tags and making sure it's kept up to date...

I see no use for it. As mentioned above, ANSI A13.1 is the way to go.

I design aqueducts in a parallel universe.

RE: Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

If you are looking for aditional information regarding p&id diagram basics, visit this article:

P&ID Diagram Basics

Thank you!

RE: Piping stenciling with P&ID numbers

Pipe marking labels must effectively communicate the contents of the pipes and give additional detail if special hazards (such as extreme temperatures or pressures) exist. The legend should be short in length and easy to understand. For example, the legend "Steam 100 PSIG" specifies the contents as well as the additional pressure hazard. An arrow should be used in conjunction with the legend to show which direction the material flows. If flow can be in both directions, arrows in both directions should be displayed.

ASME A13.1 was updated in 2007 and reaffirmed in 2013. It uses a color code chart with six standard color combinations and four user-defined combinations as shown below. The colors are based on the contents of the pipe and in general, the most hazardous feature of the contents is used to determine the colors used.

Have never seen process plants with labeling consisting of P&ID numbers.

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=148434
http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=175196

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