- Easy monitoring of pumps, blowers, screw lifts, screens, conveyors, sprayers, dryers...
- Slow rotating >35 rpm through to high speed shafts <3500rpm
- Know what will happen in time to plan ahead
Home > Industries > Water Utilities
Condition Monitoring in the Water Supply and Treatment Industries
Remember the good old days when you had plenty of spare capacity? If you had a failure you switched over to a standby unit. Who needed Condition Monitoring?
But times are changing - You’re now part of a lean & efficient business, more than ever CM has a profitable role to play in your business.
- Spare capacity costs real money
- You're running machinery closer to its design limits
- Trouble-free running is a thing of the past
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Unplanned failures and secondary damage eat into your budget
These pumps are based on the principle of the Archimedes screw and typically rotate at ~45rpm. The drive gearbox, wall-plate bearing and bottom end (plain) bearing are critical parts which are very easy to monitor using MHC technology. The figure shows Distress® readings on 4 wall plate bearings, one of which has a very high reading, indicating a serious fault. There were no other signs that the bearing was in a bad condition, it was not noisy or running hot. Acting on the Distress® reading, strip-down revealed serious pitting on one of the tapered rolling elements. Approximately £20K was saved compared to an in-service failure which would have destroyed the (submerged) bottom end bearing.
Identifying a Faulty Aerator Gearbox
Gearboxes are mechanically complex and difficult to monitor using vibration techniques. Using MHC reveals the presence of problems without knowing details of bearing sizes, shaft speeds, numbers of teeth etc. At one site, 80 gearboxes were monitored on a monthly basis and the Distress® reading revealed 10 to have problems. The figure shows the trend of Distress® readings of one gearbox as it approached final failure. The signals tell a clear story, yet the site engineer initially did not accept that the gearbox had a problem since it did not feel hot, vibrate, sound noisy or have discoloured oil. Two weeks later this gearbox seized and was a total write off. 
