Enterprise-Wide Condition Monitoring Solution for Reciprocating Compressors
During this Mobius Connect sponsored webinar, Mike Hastings and Jon Fox from B&K Vibro are joined by Anthony Fregosi from Cornerstone Chemical Company to discuss how Condition Monitoring helped Cornerstone Chemical Company overcome maintenance issues they had for several years with their two 3-throw, 3-stage reciprocating compressors. The webinar will explore this digital transformation project that provided a cost-effective, easier, and more transparent way of managing data, a better overview of the healthcare of the machines, and less IT cost in maintaining stand-alone database servers. The presentation will further examine:
- The maintenance and challenges of a specific customer’s reciprocating compressors and how the monitoring requirements were made.
- How the AVEVA™ PI System™ can be used in a Condition Monitoring perspective for providing a common database for all machines and process data and for performing analytics.
- How the AVEVA™ PI System™ takes in data from the B&K Vibro monitoring system and how this system’s specialized plots are seamlessly displayed in the AVEVA™ PI System™.
- How other service providers such as TrendMiner are integrated into the AVEVA™ PI System™ for displaying an overview of the healthcare of all assets and providing notification of events, and even additional analytics.
Description : Reciprocating compressors play a critical role in a number of industries but require more maintenance than a comparable turbo-compressor. An effective condition monitoring and diagnostics strategy therefore plays an extremely important role for reducing downtime and life cycle costs of these machines while increasing reliability, safety, integrity and efficiency. There are a number of monitoring techniques that are available for detecting wear, component failure, leaks and other faults in reciprocating compressors that have been developed over the years. This case study presents an innovative method for implementing some of these techniques in an enterprise-wide data historian for optimizing the monitoring strategy.
Cornerstone Chemical Company (CCC), located in Louisiana, USA, has had maintenance issues with their two 3-throw, 3-stage reciprocating compressors for several years now. These compress CO2 in an ammonium carbamate process for making urea, which is then converted into melamine. There have been issues with the valves and other faults, including cylinder liner fractures, and their legacy monitoring solution was not providing sufficient warning of defects. There was also not sufficient diagnostic expertise to deal with this situation, so reactive maintenance was done, resulting in expensive downtime. Another solution was needed.
Brüel & Kjær Vibro (B&K Vibro) together with TF Hudgins took up the challenge to solve this problem for CCC. The monitoring techniques themselves that were offered were by no means different than what has been used by the industry over the years, but their implementation was innovative. The AVEVA™ PI system™, which is being implemented in industries all around the world, provides an overview of all production assets from both an operational and maintenance perspective. It is no longer necessary to use proprietary servers for storing condition monitoring data.
The B&K Vibro VC-8000 Setpoint condition monitoring system continuously delivers monitoring data to the AVEVA™ PI System™. Specialized plots such as pressure volume (PV) diagrams and rod load, however, are only done in the Setpoint system, but can be easily accessed from PI by a click. The AVEVA™ PI System™ can also do much of the performance analytics with its powerful calculation engine. For visualization and notifications of alarms, the TrendMiner system is used, which imports data from the PI system, and also provides analytics.
The end result of this digital transformation project is that it provided a cost-effective, easier and more transparent way of managing data, better overview on the healthcare of the machines and less IT cost in maintaining stand-alone database servers.
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