Fertilizer Manufacturer Prevents Rotating Equipment Issues, Realizing Significant Savings in Repair and Replacement
Business Results
- Avoids potentially significant rotating equipment replacement costs
- Focuses on preparing for fixes rather than responding to breakdowns
- Shares team wisdom and insights on vibration data across production facilities
Application
Predicting issues on compressor units and other equipment related to refrigeration for storage of anhydrous ammonia.
Customer
As a wholesale distributor, the user's facility in Nebraska, USA stores and ships anhydrous ammonia.
Challenge
In ongoing efforts to improve their processes and reduce waste, the team at the fertilizer facility in Nebraska, sought to move away from quarterly route-based machine monitoring and other manual processes. They recognized that creating a solution to automatically gather and store vibration data would free the technicians to work on other tasks. In addition, data could be obtained at any time, rather than quarterly.
But more than that, they knew that the digital data could help them improve process reliability and predict when condensers, fans, and pumps might be headed for issues that could slow down or stop the process. Their goal was to plan repairs rather than react to, for example, broken fan blades and risk the associated costs of labor, parts, and missed opportunities.
Solution
The company partnered with Emerson in 2023 to design a solution that could manage pervasive sensing while providing prediction, protection, and process monitoring capabilities. Mounted at the assets throughout the facility, AMS Asset Monitor reduced cabling requirements and other installation costs.
In the solution, each large dual-stage compressor is attached to its own dedicated AMS Asset Monitor unit. Sharing the remaining AMS Asset Monitor CHARMs are two cold pumps, three hot pumps, two condenser fans, and two heater fans.
During startup as soon as the AMS Asset Monitors were powered up and commissioned, the customer team scrolled through each AMS Asset Monitor CHARM on the web interface and saw that compared to the other condenser fan bearings, one specific bearing had a potential problem. That fan did not present any visual or audible signs of a bad bearing, but the concern was clear on the AMS Asset Monitor web interface.
Happy that they were able to address the issue during scheduled downtime, the team took the condenser fan apart, inspected it, and found the bad bearing. After the bearing was replaced, the AMS Asset Monitor CHARM showed normal conditions on the web interface.
Although the exact savings of avoiding an incident is hard to quantify, finding the bearing issue before shaft wobbling even began delivered significant benefits to the customer facility. A failure going undetected could have resulted in significant damage to the equipment, thus increasing repair cost, labor costs, and the cost of missed opportunity for revenue.
Shortly after the fan bearing incident was found, startup was finished, and data connections were set up to export data via Modbus to the facility’s Pi System. Tracking vibration data helps the team decide whether maintenance or a shutdown is necessary. Because they can obtain data at any time in the process, they can see current and historical data and review trends. In fact, the entire team can see the same data, understand causes, and decide on repairs.
Equipment fails. That’s life. Now we can detect failures early, fix them, and prevent issues with more equipment downstream in the process. We like having the predictability and the confidence that it brings.”
- Reliability Leader
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