Some pump manufacturers supplied with visual monitor without extra cost.
Some engineers applied cost / benefit.
Cost of acquisition, installation and operation of condition monitoring VS.
Benefit to avoid Cost for bearing replacement, maintenance, lost of production, etc.
Then, some questions to clarify what you like to do.
How many pumps you have (total number in your plant)?
How much % are critical pumps (compared with total)?
Do these pumps have stand by pump?
How much % are process pumps?
How much is MTBF for these pumps?
How many pumps you are thinking to monitor?
How often bearings fail in your plant? if it is not an issue why you should monitor?.
What are typical failures for your pumps?
Wireless technology or classic technology?
Hi Pumpsmart,
How many pumps you have (total number in your plant)?100 +
How much % are critical pumps (compared with total)?10%
Do these pumps have stand by pump?None
How much % are process pumps?70%
How much is MTBF for these pumps?8000 hrs min
How many pumps you are thinking to monitor? Process Pumps
How often bearings fail in your plant?for pumps not much
if it is not an issue why you should monitor?.for monitoring and avoid replacement by preventive maintenance
What are typical failures for your pumps?seal problems
Wireless technology or classic technology? preferred wired technology...
Thnks for your initial comments
It is expensive so you will start with critical pumps.
And since main problem (seal problems) are not direct detected by vibration wired sytem, you will:
1.Use some mechanical seal detectors like leakage detector or face temperature sensor.
2.Start a Mechanical Seal improvement for long MTBF.
You need to determine what failure modes you are experiencing. For each failure mode, determine the P-F interval. This is the time interval between when the failure can be detected using vibration monitoring equipment and when the machine fails to provide the needed function. For a rolling element bearing with a well-designed and maintained lubrication system, this interval should be several weeks. In this case, portable vibration monitoring once per month should be able to detect the failure.
We have approximately 1400 centrifugal pumps. Most of them use oil lubricated ball bearings. We take vibration data on all of these pumps once per month. This vibration program detects approximately 80 percent of all detectable failures before the operators know that there is a problem.
In general, I don’t recommend continuous vibration monitoring for any pump that has a full spare. For pumps without a full spare, I would do a cost benefit analysis. If the pump uses rolling element bearings, the result is likely to be that the cost cannot be justified. Portable vibration analysis once per month is sufficient. For pumps with hydro-dynamic bearings, the answer is often the same. The money could be better spent on a very good oil system with redundancy, monitoring, alarms, trips and auto-starts.
We have continuous vibration monitoring on four pumps out of 1400. All of these are critical, unspared and greater than 1000 HP. We are going to add wireless monitoring to some high speed pumps which are known to fail very quickly. These pumps are integrally geared and have internal, shaft driven oil pumps. The lube oil system has no redundancy, no monitoring, no alarming, no trips and known failure modes which can occur with little or no detectable symptoms. In addition, the pumps are in light hydrocarbon service with a potential for a very serious event if there is a large leak. Even with all of these shortcomings, the monitoring is justified by the risk of a large release, not maintenance cost savings.
