David Stevens, Technical Authority and Skills Competence Manager for AVT Reliability®, explains the important role that ‘smart sensors’ play in improving reliability while delivering cost-efficiency.
A company looking to digitalise its condition monitoring (CM) programme should carefully consider the capabilities of the technological tools currently on the market, to ensure they get the best return on investment.
The selection of sensors - the device fixed to a rotating machine to take measurements such as vibration and temperature - is a good place to start.
Fixed sensors with low price tags are available, but they require physical monitoring, cannot be configured to the process, and produce no analytical data.
By contrast, advanced ‘smart sensors’ demand a higher price but deliver:
- Configurability
- Detailed analysis
- High data storage
- Accessibility and hazard limitation
Configurability enables a smart sensor to collect readings after a pre-determined time period and only when the machine is running. After a specified period of anything from one hour to four weeks, the sensor ‘wakes up’, ready to collect a full set of triaxial vibration readings - particularly valuable for batch process applications.
With systems such as Machine Sentry®, the portal uses component templates with predefined vibration measurements. This can facilitate different frequency ranges and lines of resolution for vibration measurements, depending on the rotational speeds of the components. While many sensors only work between 10Hz and 1kHz, a smart sensor can be configured to take readings up to 5.5kHz, delivering more information at a far greater range and enabling a more tailored CM solution.
It can also measure the components’ surface temperature - particularly useful for continuously running machines.
Digital data collection enables up to 5,000 readings to be stored securely in the cloud, provides real-time analysis, issues alerts about impending problems and suggests pre-emptive action to avoid unscheduled downtime. This information can be accessed via any web browser, from any location.
A smart meter provides accessibility to hard-to-reach assets or those in chemical environments, while remote data collection from, for example, an offloading pump, removes operator risk.
One chemical company saved £252,320 over 12 months after digitalising its CM – proving the adage ‘you get what you pay for’.
