One-Stop Guide for Pressure and Leak Tests with Hydrostatic and Pneumatic Testing: Make no common mistakes with pressure and leak tests, and stop relying on others who pretend they know it.

This book contains proven steps and strategies on how to conduct pressure and leak tests correctly and safely by either hydrostatic or pneumatic testing.
Pressure test has been one of the most confusing and misunderstood issue for many engineers. Are you sure you are doing it right? Are you sure you can trust your mechanical engineers? Most people think they already know how to conduct a pressure test correctly while they actually do not. Follow the guidelines in this one-stop guide to conduct pressure tests safely and correctly. Failure to follow the guidelines may result in property damage and even injury or death of relevant personnel.
Pressure test is a mandatory activity to test strength and leaks of any vessel or piping system after fabrication or modification. Pressure test medium can be either water or safe liquid (hydrostatic test/ hydrotest) or using air or safe gas (pneumatic test). The test medium pressure is raised to a certain set pressure and held for a certain period of time to ensure that the test equipment pressure can withstand the design pressure with sufficient safety margin without visual leaks.
The author’s project experience suggests that this seemingly simple test has been done incorrectly and unsafely because engineers tend to blindly follow plant’s inherited practice or other senior engineers’ practice or just do what plant’s mechanical engineers tell them to do. The author suggests the readers to correctly follow pressure test guidelines in ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel (BPV) codes, ASME piping codes, and API standards that are applicable to your specific plant and equipment whenever doing the pressure test. This one-stop guide is focused on refinery and petrochemical plants which mainly refer to ASME BPV Code Sec. VIII Div.1 [1] and ASME B31.3 Chemical Plant and Petroleum Refinery Piping [2]. Major issues with pressure tests that the author often found are:
1) Pressure test confusion with leak test
2) Unnecessary use of dangerous pneumatic test instead of safe hydrostatic test
3) Incorrectly set test pressure with different type of system or different version of ASME code used
4) Failure to account for liquid static head in test pressure gauge reading
5) Failure to account for the difference in allowable stresses atoperating temperature and pressure test temperature when setting the test pressure
6) Incorrect pressure test procedure
7) Inappropriate testing medium used
8) Incorrect application of pressure test concept to shell and tube heat exchanger design pressure setting.

This one-stop guide will cover the above issues and guide readers to conduct pressure tests safely and correctly.