Silicon crystal production plant makes significant cost savings using Schaeffler’s OPTIME
- OPTIME wireless condition monitoring sensors were installed at the plant to continuously monitor 38 ‘critical’ vacuum piston pumps
- Nine machine failures were prevented in 18 months. Prevention of one piston pump stoppage equates to savings of around 78,000 euros in 12 months.
- OPTIME monitors a range of rotating equipment at the plant including vacuum piston pumps, motors, fans, and centrifugal pumps.
Key points
Schaeffler’s OPTIME wireless condition monitoring solution has saved the MEMC Electronic Materials plant in Italy around 78,000 euros per year by preventing unplanned downtime of vacuum piston pumps. The plant benefits from the early detection of equipment failures, as well as a condition monitoring solution that is easily scalable at any time.
The GlobalWafers Co. Ltd (GWC) Group, based in Taiwan, is the world’s third largest silicon producer for microelectronics applications. The company has 16 production sites in eight countries and employs around 6,900 people worldwide.
One of the eight sites is MEMC Electronic Materials SpA in Merano, Italy. With around 250 employees, the plant produces silicon single-crystal ingots of various diameters, which are later processed into silicon wafers at other plants. Piston pumps play a key role in this process. Should they fail, this impacts the entire operation.
Challenge
The first and most important step in the production of silicon wafers is the growth of single crystal silicon. The MEMC plant uses the Czochralski process to grow crystals, which essentially consists of the three steps of melting down polycrystalline silicon with dopants, dipping the seed crystal, and pulling the single crystal (ingot).
The important factor in growing crystals is to create an environment that is as pure as possible. This is ensured, not only by the special nature of the crucibles, but also by the piston pumps, which create a vacuum during the pulling process of the single crystal to avoid impurities and oxidation. The piston pumps are therefore classified as ‘critical’ by the maintenance department.
Maurizio Ceriotti, Plant Maintenance Manager at MEMC Merano comments: “When the piston pumps fail, the respective machine must be stopped, and the growing process is lost. This results in high personnel, material and scrap costs.”
In the past, MEMC used a vibration analysis system, but due to its complexity, was deemed unsuitable for monitoring the piston pumps. In addition to searching for a suitable predictive monitoring solution for the piston pumps, the plant’s maintenance team required a solution for monitoring generic units such as fans, motors and other pumps to ensure best asset availability across the whole plant.
Easily scalable, wireless solution
Working together with the customer and understanding the demanding needs of the application, Schaeffler’s experts recommended OPTIME, an easily scalable wireless condition monitoring solution consisting of wireless sensors, a gateway and digital services based on proprietary Schaeffler algorithms.
The gateway receives data from the sensors and transfer it to the Schaeffler cloud. OPTIME automatically detects any problems, issues the appropriate alarms and provides information on the possible cause of the problem.
Condition monitoring expertise on the part of the customer is not required as this knowledge is already fully integrated into OPTIME.
Two OPTIME sensors were installed on each of the 38 piston pumps – one sensor directly on the pump and one sensor on the engine. Maintenance is informed about the condition of the piston pumps via a mobile app.
In total, nine failures were avoided in 18 months. The prevention of one piston pump stoppage equates to savings of around 78,000 euros in 12 months.
Two example cases
Around two months after installation, a warning message was issued in the OPTIME app. The MEMC maintenance team confirmed increased vibration during a scheduled stop. As a result, the motor and anti-vibration feet were replaced.
In another case, over several weeks, the vibration characteristics increased steadily at a vacuum pump unit. Then a significant increase was indicated at the piston pump motor with peak values up to 22 m/s^2, while low values were indicated at the pump.
After inspection, the maintenance team confirmed that this was a lead leakage problem at the end of the barrel, caused by imbalance. It was also found that the sleeve was perforated. The corresponding units were replaced, therefore an unplanned shutdown was avoided.
Carlos Vinicius Carnio, Maintenance Engineer at the plant stated: “With OPTIME CM, we have finally found a solution to monitor our piston pumps very easily. We installed about half of the sensors ourselves. With the solution, we found nine faults in just one and a half years, thereby preventing expensive unplanned shutdowns. The simplicity, scalability and finally having more transparency about the condition of the machines excites us.”
OPTIME is part of the Schaeffler Lifetime Solutions portfolio, which offers a comprehensive range of products, services and solutions for industrial maintenance. It is designed to support maintenance engineers over the entire lifetime of a machine.
Schaeffler (UK) Ltd
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- http://www.schaeffler.co.uk
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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.
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