The case focused on an industrial plant designed to valorize Recovered Solid Fuel (RSF) using pyrolysis technology, with a complete process that included reception and feeding, pyrolytic reactors, condensation, and solid processing. The problem was that, despite the design and investment made, the facility never effectively produced, which required a rigorous analysis to determine whether the origin was in the project, in the execution, or in both.
martinsdelima approached the assignment as a work of forensic engineering: an independent technical opinion aimed at identifying root causes, separating symptoms from structural failures, and converting a complex situation into a technical, verifiable, and defensible account. To this end, the report was structured from the outset around the key elements of the case: review of the process and design, identification of deficiencies by systems, safety assessment, and a final synthesis that would allow decisions to be made on a solid technical basis.
A particularly critical point was the characterization of the raw material (RSF) and its engineering consequences. The report includes laboratory analyses (including reference to analytical standards) and how an incorrect characterization leads to erroneous technical decisions: unfeasible humidity specifications, specification errors, and direct effects on operation, such as deficient feeding, insufficient power in burners, incomplete pyrolysis, and blockages at the reactor outlet, among others.
From there, the report goes into engineering detail by subsystems and documents a set of design and commissioning deficiencies that, as a whole, explain the lack of performance: furnace defects, anomalous behavior in safety valves, problems in the gas compression system, flare deficiencies (capacity and safety), and failures in LPG storage (vaporization capacity and dimensioning). In addition, incidents specific to automation and instrumentation engineering are identified: erroneous PLC installation, vulnerabilities in communications (e.g., fiber optic ring exposed to overheating), and mechanical design aspects such as the choice of horizontal tanks for settling when the appropriate solution required a different approach.
The work was not limited to describing failures: industrial safety was evaluated with a focus on operational and integrity risks, identifying scenarios such as explosion hazard due to poorly designed relief systems, emergency lighting problems due to circuit design errors, and risks associated with key equipment (compression/flare/condensation). And, to close the expert circle, the report incorporates a comparison between the original plant and the current plant (plans and configuration), which allows explaining precisely what was changed, why, and with what technical objective.
The “excellent resolution” came from an unusual combination: technical depth, clear structure, and solution orientation. The report identifies the failures by families (process, mechanics, safety, automation, and instrumentation), and for each block includes the analysis of the error and its remediation as an engineering roadmap (for example, in furnace, valves, compression, flare, LPG, PLC, or settling tanks). In practice, this made it possible to transform a technical-industrial conflict into a complete and actionable diagnosis, with robust conclusions to support a position with maximum technical credibility.