Sensors for Rotating Assets to Ensure uninterrupted operation
Municipal water authorities oversee a vast range of infrastructure, including wastewater treatment plants, water treatment plants, lift stations, pump stations, storage tanks and miles of sewer/water pipelines. The efficient and uninterrupted operation of the system is essential in order for water authorities to stay in compliance with local and federal drinking water and wastewater discharge/treatment laws.
The infrastructure system includes a variety of rotating assets, including blowers/fans, motors and pumps. Performing vibration analysis on this equipment can detect developing faults early so that they can be addressed before causing catastrophic failure.
Many water authorities already utilize a SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system to monitor and control the process. Vibration transmitters with a current output can be easily integrated into that existing system in order to collect and record vibration data. Vibration transmitters output an overall value, which does not require extensive mathematical analysis to interpret and is well suited for the knowledge level of process control generalists within a facility.
For those facilities with vibration analysis capabilities and resources, a wide variety of accelerometers are available that can be used for route-based measurements in conjunction with a third-party handheld data collector or for permanent installations in conjunction with online data acquisition systems.