High cost savings through online condition monitoring and automatic lubrication of flood pumps
Floods are a major challenge for many countries today. Over the last few years, the UK has suffered badly from a series of violent storms that caused widespread flooding – both in terms of coastal areas and river floods. Industry experts predict that due to the effects of Climate Change, these types of storms are likely to continue over the next decade and beyond.
Despite significant achievements in the UK’s river flood forecasting and early warning systems, there is still a need for effective tools and measures, either to prevent the floods or at least to decrease their negative impact on agricultural and urban areas. This information can be used by storm-water and flood pumping stations to avoid the damage that can occur after the flood. One of the main issues is the condition monitoring of these pumping stations. In some cases, these stations are not ready for an instant response to natural disasters such as floods. In order to prevent unexpected failures of the drives or the pumps themselves, it is necessary to monitor the condition of the equipment. One method of achieving this is to install condition monitoring devices on pumps and motors to provide advanced warnings of any impending bearing failures.
Flood pumping station in Belgium
In a recent example in Belgium, SmartCheck condition monitoring devices and CONCEPT2 automatic lubricators were installed on flood pumps and motors. Schaeffler’s Belgian customer has since seen a range of benefits, including the prevention of unplanned downtime to pumping stations, reduced maintenance costs and increased plant availability.
Challenge for Schaeffler
The customer is primarily responsible for water, air and environmental resources. The company’s area of responsibility includes maintaining the operation of pumping stations.
In order to avoid flooding in its area of responsibility, the customer built a pumping station. A catch basin and three propeller pumps in the pumping station ensure that any excess water is pumped out and diverted accordingly. Inadequate pump monitoring led to the unforeseen failure of a bearing. As a result of this, the pump wheel began to vibrate, causing 5cm of wear to the pump housing. In order to prevent pump failures due to bearing damage in the future, the customer sought a condition monitoring solution for the pumping station.
Schaeffler Solution
Schaeffler experts recommended installing six CONCEPT2 automatic lubrication systems for lubrication of bearings in the motors and pumps. This solutions permits ongoing and reliable lubrication of the bearings. CONCEPT2 supplies two lubrication points independently of each other
and withstands pressures up to 50 bar.
Schaeffler also recommended installing nine SmartCheck condition monitoring devices to monitor the three pump/motor units. Two SmartChecks are installed per unit to monitor the upper and lower motor bearings, plus an additional SmartCheck on each of the pump bearings.
Any deviations or changes in vibration behaviour are detected by SmartCheck and reported via the customer’s control system, thus allowing incipient bearing damage to be detected at an early stage. Monitored parameters include vibration, temperature, speed and cavitation.
The local dealer Supplimax, a certified Schaeffler partner, recommended the systems and will be providing future on-site service advice.
Customer Benefits
As a result of Schaeffler’s holistic predictive monitoring solution, the customer is seeing the following benefits:
- Prevention of unplanned downtime of the pumping station during ongoing operation.
- No costs incurred by production stoppages.
- No secondary damage to motors and pumps.
- Low acquisition costs of the monitoring systems.
- Reduced maintenance costs.
- Increased plant availability.
- Greater security due to self-reporting systems.
Working on the basis of just one occurrence of bearing damage per year, the following savings would be achieved using the monitoring systems:
Estimated savings with the SmartCheck and CONCEPT2
Annual maintenance expenditure (8 h)………………………….. €1,000 One-off expenditure for SmartChecks and CONCEPT2………. €14,000 Pump damage without monitoring systems……………………… €50,000
With monitoring system
Cost saving following initial occurrence of damage……………. €35,000 Cost saving with each subsequent occurrence of damage……. €49,000
Condition monitoring across 15 pumping stations
In a similar example, a drinking water treatment company in Asia is preventing unplanned downtime of critical equipment across its pumping stations following the successful installation of a condition monitoring solution from Schaeffler.
The customer operates a drinking water treatment facility where each day, 200 million litres of water can be treated, filtered, chlorinated, ozonised and biologically activated. As the operator is responsible for ensuring a reliable supply of high quality drinking water for the region, protecting the relevant facilities against failure is a key priority.
The customer was looking for an intelligent condition monitoring (CM) system to reliably prevent failures in its pumping stations. After expanding its facilities by installing the latest technologies and processes for water treatment, the company wanted to implement a high performance, fully
integrated CM system solution.
The Schaeffler solution comprises a custom designed CM system based on SmartCheck sensors. In total, 84 SmartChecks are fully integrated into the customer’s infrastructure via a PLC, which monitor the critical items of equipment across 15 pumping stations. Equipment monitored includes
bearings on pumps and motors, as well as pump vanes/impellers. The SmartChecks monitor vibration, temperature and speed, as well as shaft alignment and balancing.
The data can be viewed individually at each pumping station or centrally in the control room. The system also allows the implementation of automated routines such as the triggering of alarms and the emergency shut-off of equipment.
Customer Benefits
With the help of the CM system that is fully integrated via the PLC, the customer can almost completely prevent unplanned system downtime, ensuring that high quality drinking water can be supplied to the region at all times. In addition, damage to equipment can result in high costs
amounting to several thousand euros. This risk has also been practically eliminated.
The customer-specific implemented CM solution provides very detailed information about vibration, temperature and other parameters for each item of equipment, which can be visualised in a complete, easy-to-understand way in the customer’s system. The high level of detail provides the perfect basis for ensuring operational reliability and predictive maintenance. This means the user does not require special knowledge of vibration diagnosis on-site.
CONCEPT2 E-KIT for retrofitting on electric motors
The CONCEPT2 automatic lubricator for rolling bearings is ideally suited to the individual lubrication of two bearing positions in electric motors, fans and compressors. The system provides two separate lubrication points that can be individually adjusted to supply bearings with varying lubricant
volumes. Schaeffler has developed a complete E-KIT system that enables retrofitting of the lubricator on electric motors.
The E-KIT includes all the necessary accessories required for mounting and installation, allowing a simple upgrade to a fully automatic relubrication system. The CONCEPT2 lubricator and the E-KIT are available as a complete package at a favourable price/performance ratio. The E-KIT comprises angled hose connectors and a 3-metre long hose for cutting to length. A retaining bracket, which includes a small parts kit for mounting at a 45 or 90-degree angle using an eye bolt, is also provided. Hose connectors for 6mm diameter hose (to replace existing lubrication nipples) are also supplied. The CONCEPT2 device is of course also included, either in a battery version (including battery pack) or as a 24-Volt version (including main connection cable).
info.uk@schaeffler.com
www.schaeffler.co.uk
Schaeffler (UK) Ltd
- info.uk@schaeffler.com
- http://www.schaeffler.co.uk
- Unit 308 Fort Dunlop Fort Parkway Birmingham B24 9FD GB
About us
Schaeffler Group – We pioneer motion
Schaeffler (UK) Ltd holds a total of 180 years of bearing experience and know-how. As a leading rolling bearing specialist we provide customers with innovative bearing solutions from a single source for a variety of industries, as well as condition based maintenance solutions. Our technical knowledge is second to none. Whatever the application we have the solution for you.
Where we supply to
UK Ireland, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, South America, North America
Industries we supply to
Automation, Chemicals, Consultants, Components Electronics, Energy and Power, Food and Beverage, Glass Ceramics Cement, Metals and Minerals, OEM, Paper and Pulp, Pharmaceutical Cosmetics Toiletries, Plastics and Rubber, Recycling, Textiles, Tobacco, Water and Wastewater
