By the time an emergency turbine-service team arrived in Metahara, Ethiopia, in late November 2017, the Ethiopian Sugar Corp.’s damaged sugar refinery had been idle since July, cutting off 20 percent of the country’s sugar production and hampering its exports. As the team drove in an SUV through the sugarcane fields surrounding the 50-year-old plant, a nearly five-hour-drive from the capital of Addis Ababa, a military escort came out to speed up their journey into the factory, where tables were laid with a feast for the arriving engineers.
The team, part of FieldCore, GE’s independent industrial field services company, knew they were needed. There was little sugar left in the capital, even in the hotel where they stayed on arrival or at GE’s own country headquarters. Now they met the plant’s workers, whose livelihoods depended on the plant’s operation.
A heavy summer rainstorm had caused the roof of the plant’s powerhouse to cave in, hitting two turbines that power the sugar-processing equipment. The plant’s maintenance staff couldn’t fix the units, which were discontinued models, with replacement parts unavailable. Because the manufacturer was a legacy company GE acquired with the French firm Alstom, the plant’s owners called in a FieldCore team for a last-ditch effort to save the factory.
The team, which included two supervising engineers from Nigeria, plus specialized technicians from India, Croatia, Algeria and the Philippines, had already checked with the GE Power Services engineering troubleshooting center in Baden, Switzerland. They learned that another GE service team had performed work on the same turbines three years previously, and that the units were nearing, if not already past, their expected service life. Fixing the physical damage, on top of the decades of wear, would not be easy. And if it could be done, it would take a long time. Typically, if parts need to be sent from the U.S. or Europe, it takes weeks or months. “I told my team, ‘We can’t fail. Look at the faces of these people and see how they trust you,” says Caesar Okereke, the FieldCore service manager on the project.
Top and above: A heavy summer rainstorm had caused the roof of the plant’s powerhouse to cave in, hitting two turbines that power the sugar-processing equipment. The plant’s maintenance staff couldn’t fix the units, which were discontinued models, with replacement parts unavailable. Images credit: FieldCore.
The technicians, with help from the Metahara maintenance workers, carefully opened the broken turbines, trying not to damage the rubber seals and O-rings, which couldn’t be replaced. The building collapse had buckled the turbine’s rotors, and the unit needed oil. The team also had to figure out how to replace some damaged bearings, says Uzomaka Anucha, FieldCore’s lead engineer, who also flew in from Nigeria.
They went into the plant’s warehouse and managed to find a few spare parts that the maintenance workers hadn’t realized were there. Anything else that had to be fixed was done by hand, on-site, Okereke says.
Because of internet connectivity issues, every time they needed to troubleshoot an issue with the FieldCore service center, Anucha had to drive 10 km from the plant to catch a signal, he says.
The last few days brought a series of frustrating setbacks to the engineers, who couldn’t get the units to work properly. They worked through the night, comparing the schematic drawings the plant had with the unit itself. Then they realized the drawing itself must be wrong. “We had to switch the lines,” Anucha says.
It took the FieldCore engineers 18 days to fix the turbines — a record, given the circumstances. But with this final change, they were able to turn the unit on (and modify the drawings so this problem won’t happen again). “We revved up the unit at 4 a.m., and by 7 or 8 a.m. they were already feeding the sugarcane into the unit for processing of sugar. That tells you how hungry they were for this,” Okereke says.
Since that date, in mid-December, the Metahara plant has been operating normally again.
By the time an emergency turbine-service team arrived in Metahara, Ethiopia, in late November 2017, the Ethiopian Sugar Corp.’s damaged sugar refinery had been idle since July, cutting off 20 percent of the country’s sugar production and hampering its exports. Image credit: Shutterstock.