FEATURE PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE & CONDITION MONITORING
Protecting equipment M
onitoring the status of critical components and pieces of
equipment can help to provide early warning of any potential failure. Take the power generation industry as an example. High voltage transformers are a critical component in the generation and transmission of electricity. Not only will any downtime prevent the export of electricity, but further problems are caused by the fact that lead times for transformer repairs and replacement can be several months. According to Vaisala, efficient condition
monitoring is a recognised means of proactively mitigating the risk of transformer downtime. Measuring the hydrogen content in transformer oil and the speed of its formation allows a utility to detect and assess the severity of a fault situation, while monitoring moisture content is an important indication of the condition of transformer insulation paper as well as the oil’s ability to act as an insulator. To help, the company has introduced
the MHT410 Moisture, Hydrogen, and Temperature Transmitter. This continuously monitors changes in high-voltage transformer insulating oil, providing accurate real-time measurements and online trend data to facilitate early decision-making. By
With condition monitoring growing ever more important within the power generation industry, new instruments are being introduced to help
practical and reliable means of monitoring transformer performance. It allows us to optimise the technical life cycle of our transformers and react to potential faults in the very early phase of their development – avoiding costly interruptions to production.” In another application, machinery protection systems have been supplied by Sensonics to the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant Project in the UAE.
MONITORING MACHINES For the nuclear power project, 92 Sentry G3 4-channel protection modules and over 300 channels of vibration analysis across three cabinets, are currently undergoing commissioning as part of the Unit 1 construction phase. According to the company, the
quickly recognising transformer fault conditions, users can diagnose and resolve potential problems before any further damage is done. This data then allows operators to conduct thorough predictive maintenance planning to minimise service shutdowns and outages. As the device has an adjustable probe design that is installed in the transformer oil, the sensors are in direct contact with representative oil in the transformer, providing accurate measurements and data. Information collected by the probe is instantly available to project operators and is designed to integrate seamlessly with most data acquisition systems. One company already using the solution
is Vantaa Energy Electricity Networks. Maintenance engineer, Mikko Piironen, commented: “With Vaisala's MHT410 transmitter we have an altogether more
HEALTH CHECKS IMPROVE PLANT OPERATION
As part of Imperial College London’s £8.9 million ChemEngSpace Project, the carbon capture pilot plant facility is used for undergraduate teaching. Over 300 chemical engineering students have access to the plant each year, and here a wide range of the products and systems that are used in industrial applications worldwide can be found. These include flow, pressure, temperature and level instruments, pH analysers, positioners, a gas analyser, low voltage drives and motors, low voltage products, and a System 800xA distributed control system. All of the data from the plant is relayed to the control system through several different communication protocols including Foundation Fieldbus, Profibus and Wireless. As a result, the students acquire hands-on experience of the company’s
integrated systems and products in an operational cutting-edge industrial application, giving them experience of plant operation that will help prepare them for a career in chemical or process engineering. As part of its 10 year support agreement with the college, ABB was keen to carry out a health check on the Profibus communications system to help assess its performance. So, a Profibus analyser was connected to the network to capture a variety of performance-related information, including the data transfer rate, signal strength and any interference or noise. The analyser scans for approximately 30 minutes to an hour and records the communications data to give an indication of efficiency. ABB service engineer, Paul Bick, was under the impression that
the optimum speed for performance was 500kb/second. However, he then found that in the case of the carbon capture plant, the best speed was 1500kb/second. Increasing the speed to this new limit immediately produced a significant improvement in response time from the instruments. It was also discovered that the drives had less than one metre of
cable, however on a Profibus network a minimum of one metre of cable length should be used between each instrument. Having extended this, it now works better – without the length there can be issues with reflections, data corruptions and interferences. Dr Colin Hale, senior teaching fellow at the college, said: “A great thing about the plant is that it can be used not only to teach our students about carbon capture, but also about wider issues connected with plant control and instrumentation, including best practice. The improvements produced by the health check are a great example of the valuable contribution that maintenance can make to a system’s performance.”
ABB T: 01453 826661
www.abb.com/measurement
Machinery protection systems from Sensonics are being used
in the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant Project in the UAE
instrumentation will monitor and protect 45 machines, the balance of plant equipment for Unit 1, consisting of various fans, pumps and chillers in support of the steam turbine. The fully programmable Sentry G3 equipment is utilised to monitor bearing and shaft vibration in addition to thrust wear and speed. The specification includes dual
redundant power supplies in each rack with redundant Ethernet communications to the main plant systems for trending of overall vibration levels and the reporting of alarms. A condition monitoring package is also integrated with the G3 equipment to provide real time analysis of the vibration signals. All data is stored on a local server which provides live machine Mimic’s in combination with offline analysis of historical trends.
Vaisala Sensonics
www.vaisala.com www.sensonics.co.uk
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OCTOBER 2015 | INSTRUMENTATION
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