We think the ability to repair your phx21 LDAR analyzer is one of the most exciting parts of owning a phx21. While some other portable FID manufacturers get rich repairing their analyzers, we believe that creating value and growing with happy customers is the path to our success.

Let’s take a look at a typical phx21 repair.

Step 1. Report an issue at LDARtools.com. This report will include the serial number of the phx21, serial number of any on site replaceable part and a log file.

Step 2. An LDARtools Support Tech will contact you after reviewing the log file from your phx21. This log file records everything happening inside your phx21 every 2 seconds and allows us to make very accurate assessments of the health of any phx21. Let’s say your phx21 has a worn out pump and the phx21 pump is under warranty.

Step 3. LDARtools will send you a pump (almost always the same day!). The phx21 warranty even includes shipping to you.

Step 4. You receive the pump (kit shown on right) and install it using the procedure outlined in the manual (starts on page 3-6).

Step 5. When we send the replacement part, we also email a RMA for the pump. This gives return shipping instructions for the old broken part. Basically, you have 3 weeks to ship us this old part back.

Step 6. Celebrate! Not only is your phx21 back up and working, your repair was authorized by the manufacturer and your phx21 is still INTRINSICALLY SAFE!

Because we know that keeping your phx21 up and running is important to you, we try to do everything we can to maximize reliability and uptime. One of the things we do to maximize uptime is our warranty restart program. It goes like this, say you purchase spare parts from our KOS (Keep on Site) list but you don’t use them right away. Most companies would start the warranty on the shipment day, but not LDARtools. Simply shoot us an email with the serial number of the part you installed on the day you installed it, and we will reset your warranty for that part.

Questions? Just give us a call or click below to set up a demo. I am excited about how our customers are using the LDARtools products to change the LDAR industry and I am eager to share their stories with you.

We call them Monitoring Technicians…

The point of an LDAR program is to monitor LDAR components: to determine whether or not they are leaking according to the process mandated by Method 21. That involves VOC detectors (such as the TVA-1000B and phx21), LDAR software, LDAR dataloggers and, more and more, LDAR Bluetooth adapters. At the heart of all of these LDAR instruments is the technician who relies on them to accomplish his, or her, monitoring activities. We call these folks LDAR Monitoring Technicians.

The vast majority of the expense of any LDAR program is the cost of providing training, payroll and benefits to these monitoring technicians. Unfortunately, the closer we look at the actual work day and practice of these technicians, the clearer that we can see how it might be more a little too hopeful to call them “monitoring technicians.”

Take a look at the technician’s typical day. (I realize that no day is typical because no plant and program dynamics are identical. But it is helpful to think, at least, about the nuances of what we are determined to call a “monitoring day.”)

Assume he works a 10 hour day. That’s 600 minutes. We assume a 15-minute break in the morning and a 15-minute break in the afternoon. But it takes the technician 5 minutes to get from the process unit (where he is monitoring) to the break area. And then 5 minutes to get back. This adds 10 minutes in the morning and then 10 minutes in the afternoon. That’s 50 minutes out, we are down to 550.

Many programs allow 30 minutes for lunch, with 15 minutes before and after to leave the process unit and then get back to it. There goes another 60 minutes, leaving 490.
The Tech’s payroll start time is 6:00. How long does it take him to get to his first component? Assuming that someone else has already calibrated his VOC analyzer. He has to get his handheld, assemble his gear, do a quick check on his equipment, meet with this Field Supervisor, perhaps there is a safety meeting, confirm his assignment, travel to the unit where he is assigned, secure a safe work permit, determine what his first component is and then find it. Rarely have we seen programs where the expectation is that this can routinely be done in less than 60 minutes. So our First Component Success target is set at 7:00am and the 490 is now reduced to 430 minutes.

The end of the day suggests a similar logic but usually with a smaller window owing to the fact that it is easier to stop almost any process than it is to initiate it. So the index for the end-of-day could be 45 minutes. That puts us down to (430-45=) 385 minutes.

65% of a 10-hour day, 385 minutes, is GONE and we haven’t monitored a single component.

…..And that is assuming that the technician is on time, motivated, quickly equipped, and aware of the urgency of each moment. It assumes that the morning procedure that is being managed by your site management is working seamlessly and the safe work permits are issued without delay. It assumes that the technician can quickly find the four milestone components (i.e. the first component that he monitors at the start of each monitoring session). It assumes that the technician is not tempted to stretch a break or lunch period by 2 minutes, or 10 or 20. It assumes that the technician’s equipment and software work as they were designed to: nothing breaks, no hydrogen supply or battery problems. It assumes that the technician either had GPS support when locating components, knows the unit like the back of his hand or has absolutely accurate location descriptions. And, finally, it assumes that the technician is determined to monitor until that critical end-of-day target (45 minutes prior to quitting time) rather than giving into the temptation to knock off a little (or a lot) early.

Imagine that: if everything works flawlessly day in and day out, days, weeks, months and quarters on end, you are still spending $35 out of every $100 for time during which NO ONE is even expected to monitor.

LDAR’s worst kept secret: you will be lucky to have only 35% wastage. It is likely that is far worse, UNLESS you have a tireless, seamless and disciplined site management process AND your monitoring technicians are all saints.

In the likely event that you don’t have such an optimal, 35% situation, the secret is in using the right software.

What that software can do will be the subject of our next blog.

As we have discussed in recent blogs, the advent of TVA wireless capabilities has triggered the introduction of much more powerful and flexible LDAR dataloggers to work along with the TVA-1000B and any other VOC detector. These enhanced fugitive emissions instruments have opened up the possibility of addressing and achieving a wide array of LDAR solutions.

One of the most important LDAR solutions involves being able better to understand the factors that are driving the cost of any LDAR program. In the past, it has been assumed that the facility owner was paying for in-house employees or contractor technicians to “monitor LDAR components.” The most experienced and perceptive LDAR managers have long recognized that the real cost of an LDAR program is not the time that it takes to monitor components, but the time that it takes to prepare to monitor, get to the components, identify the specific component that is next in the route, perform any required tag maintenance and then find the next component, not to mention the time required for permitting, safety updates, lunch, breaks and the end-of-day routine.

Looked at from this point of view, we can see that most of an LDAR technicians day is actually spent “not monitoring” even when her work is effectively organized and she is determined to operate at as high a level as possible. In the past, however, the only question that could be reasonably asked, at the end of the day, was “how many components did you get monitored?” For this reason (because it was just about all the data that was available) this was how we tracked technician performance and understood the nature of the expense.
Stated another way: it takes, perhaps, 2 minutes to monitor an LDAR component. But if it is the first component of the day, it could “take” 60-90 minutes, or more. And if the data does not lead the technician directly to the component or if GPS resources are not available, then it could take even longer. It is this extraordinarily long non-monitoring time that is the proper subject of the most diligent analysis.

With the new TVA wireless capability, which is also available for other VOC detectors (such as the phx21™), the LDAR datalogger can now easily record a wide array of information about the time that the technician is not spending monitoring components. How long are the lunch breaks? The technician knows. Do you? How long are the morning and afternoon breaks? How much time (and money!) is being spent on the end-of-day routine AFTER the last component is monitored?

Years of analysis demonstrate that the best technician actually spends less than half of a typical 10-hour day with her probe on an LDAR component. What is being done for those other hours and how can the program be improved to minimize this time? Asking the most important LDAR question is essential to finding the best LDAR solution.

The first step is to deploy fugitive emissions instruments (such as Bluetooth adapters and LDAR dataloggers) that can capture the data that you need.

The next step is to have the right LDAR software in the handheld and on the desktop. The right software on the handheld will help ensure that you collect the information that you need. While the right LDAR software on the desktop should help you mine the data to efficiently assess what the technicians were doing and how their work can be better organized to maximize the value of each LDAR dollar you are spending.

While the comment you posted has been removed as it was not relevant to the topic, you did say you were having trouble with your phx21 and that we(the people behind the product) were not “loyal”. While I am not sure what you mean by loyal, we are eager to help you with your phx21 problems.

A portable FID is a very complex instrument and you will have occasional issues but we have nearly 300 in the field working and we have 2 in our shop being worked on. I am certain we turn you into a happy customer if you let us try.

Hopefully this message reaches you, as you did not leave a valid email address.

Please contact me immediately and I will make arrangements to visit you.

Kevin Moses
Director of Operations
LDARtools
primary 281.542.3108

In the earliest days of the LDAR Industry, there was the Foxboro OVA-108. It was an analog VOC analyzer that presented its PPM results on a dial that made getting a precise reading a lot like trying to tell time with a sun dial. In the fall of 1995, the momentum shifted toward the Thermo TVA 1000. Interestingly enough, it was not the fact that the Thermo TVA 1000 was a vastly superior analyzer that drove the dynamic. The TVA 1000 WAS a digital device along with being much easier to calibrate precisely. When Thermo released the TVA 1000B, with the capability of recognizing multiple calibration (span) points, the technological advantage of the TVA over the OVA was fully achieved.
But the market force that catapulted the Thermo TVA 1000 and 1000B to the undisputed LDAR Industry leader was the capability of interfacing it electronically with the LeakTracker hand held datalogger. By enabling the direct connectivity of the Thermo TVA 1000B with the LeakTracker via the AIMS cable, the integrated package brought about a sea change in the expectation that everyone had about how monitoring readings were generated, captured and labeled with time and date stamps calibrated to the precise second. These time/date stamps and the fact that they were generated automatically by the system (sometimes unbeknownst even to the technician) became the coin of the realm for LDAR program managers determined to shore up the integrity and reliability of their LDAR monitoring results.
Data recordation, management and integrity proved to be a far more compelling LDAR feature than the technological advantages that one analyzer possessed over another.
And so the pattern was set.
The Thermo TVA 1000B maintained its industry domination until the data recordation process experienced another sea change in 2007, when Bluetooth technology started to redefine the LDAR Industry. Almost overnight, the introduction of Thermo TVA 1000B Bluetooth Adapters ushered onto the scene a phalanx of successors to the LeakTracker. The primary selling point was no longer that you had a Thermo TVA 1000B- but that you had a Thermo TVA 1000B Bluetooth Adapter. The analyzer’s function and value was defined, almost, by how it communicated its result to the PDA that the technician was carrying.

And that changed everything.