Online Condition Monitoring H.V.A.C. equipment is often hard to access, posing a problem maintenance crews and/or any portable data collection. Often considered expensive and difficult to get started it is quite easy and economical. This session will help you understand the possibilities of remote condition monitoring, easy diagnosis, and the ability to increase your uptime of your equipment. We will cover the various types of opportunities within hospitals and the type of communication readily available. Alex Nino is an application engineer with LUDECA, Inc. in Doral, FL. He has over 10 years experience in the fields of alignment, vibration analysis and balancing. Alex has a Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Florida and holds an ISO Level 1 Vibration Analysis certification. Alex currently manages the LUDECAwind division of LUDECA, Inc. focusing on reliability and maintenance of wind turbines. He can be reached at [email protected]
Transcript
Online Condition Monitoring
H.V.A.C. equipment is often hard to access, posing a problem maintenance crews
and/or any portable data collection. Often considered expensive and difficult to get
started it is quite easy and economical. This session will help you understand the
possibilities of remote condition monitoring, easy diagnosis, and the ability to increase
your uptime of your equipment.
We will cover the various types of opportunities within hospitals and the type of
communication readily available.
Alex Nino is an application engineer with LUDECA, Inc. in Doral, FL. He has over 10
years experience in the fields of alignment, vibration analysis and balancing. Alex has a
Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the
University of Florida and holds an ISO Level 1 Vibration Analysis certification. Alex
currently manages the LUDECAwind division of LUDECA, Inc. focusing on reliability
and maintenance of wind turbines. He can be reached at [email protected]
Condition Monitoring is the process of monitoring a parameter of conditions in machinery, such that a significant change is indicative of a developing failure.
It is a component of Preventive and Predictive Maintenance.
The use of condition monitoring allows maintenance departments and facility engineers to make decisions and schedule work and other actions to be taken.
The idea behind condition monitoring is to avoid the consequences of failure,
As there is no information or measurement data about the condition of the machine, maintenance intervals are set every certain operating hours or elapsed time. The machines are stopped even there is no reason to do so. In addition, parts that may last longer are changed before their component lifetime has been reached. A greater number of spare parts are required on stock. Bottom line: interval based maintenance is not a very good choice…
In this example there is one planned short machine stop based on machine condition Example: exchange of a coupling or for lubricating the bearings inside a gearbox
The second intervention is a scheduled machine stop based on machine condition Example: correction of unbalance with a field balancing instrument, correction of misalignment with a laser alignment tool, exchanging certain parts e.g. bearings or other components.
Online monitoring allows to customers with shortcomings in skills or available personnel to properly monitor your equipment efficiently and accurately.
Online monitoring does not require fully trained skill personnel to use
Having a CM Online system will allow you to properly surveillance your asset on a 24/7 cycle and properly alert users of the conditions of the machine.
It provide “smaller intervals between measurements: Online CMS perform measurements several times a day per measurement point (-> e.g. failures with a quick evolution of failure can be predicted effectively)
Trends are registered continuously ensuring detection of any variation in machinery health
It is very difficult to collect data of irregular or temporarily increase of vibration Example: with offline you must be in the right place at the right time!
Critical machines that are an element in production processes require online monitoring which allows highest reliability condition monitoring ⎝ ideal for critical machines
Less intervention of plant personal is required: (online CMS does the measurements and handles alarming, etc) Less time is invested in collecting measurement data
Allows maintenance and reliability personnel to dedicate time to other important tasks
Optimization of data to be supplied to Supervision systems like SCADA or Building Automation systems (ex. Johnson Control systems, Siemens, etc)
Accessing cooling tower gearboxes and fan bearings for vibraNon analysis has always been a challenge for many predicNve maintenance programs.
While the motor is o_en accessible, the gearbox and fans are usually located inside the cooling tower cell, making these components inaccessible while the fan is in operaNon.
Many companies are creaNng a program to monitor the inaccessible machine components of cooling towers by permanently mounNng low-‐cost accelerometers and cables to the gearboxes and fans and connecNng them to a single, centrally located
Gearbox: the gearbox can be a source of excessive maintenance for several reasons. Located inside the cell, it is subjected to aerodynamic loading from the fan, misalignment of the gear to the motor and/or excessive loading on the gear teeth. Environmental factors can also contribute to gearbox degradaNon. Chemicals added to the water to control the pH of the cooling tower water are typically causNc.
Motor: Since the cooling tower motors are more readily accessible to the vibraNon analyst, portable measurements (magnet-‐mounted accelerometers) are used to monitor their condiNon. Motor unbalance, rotor bar defects, output sha_ alignment and bearing defects are typical faults detected.
Fan: although infrequent, can be catastrophic. If undetected, the fan blades can detach and damage the cell and surrounding components.
