Case Study for Cooling Tower Vib Monitoring

[constovich]

Is anyone aware of a case study or white paper relating to the risks involved with inadequate vibration monitoring on Cooling Towers? We have 9000 series monitors installed on our Cooling Towers that were installed in 1986. We have been patching these monitors together for the last decade - repairing boards with lightning damage even. The project to replace this monitor has been unslotted by management again so it is time to start fighting again....

Thanks!

[Steve Sabin]

constovich,

There is a case history from the Dec 1994 issue of ORBIT that you might find helpful:

Catastrophic Failure of a Cooling Tower Fan

This particular CT Fan was monitored once per month with a portable data collector. It was also fitted with mechanical vibration switches, but they did not work even under catastrophic failure conditions for two reasons:

1) They were mounted in the wrong location
2) The harsh environment corroded the switch internal mechanisms so that they failed to operate when required

I'm not sure if this case history can be of help to you, but it does help convey just how serious a failure can be in terms of repair costs. It also shows that even though the fan was instrumented with vibration switches and visited each month with a portable data collector route, these proved to be inadequate in preventing or even predicting a failure.

You may be able to extrapolate these ramifications to your situation of having an older monitoring system that has become unreliable and is in need of an upgrade.

Regards,

Steve Sabin
Editor - ORBIT Magazine
GE Energy

[constovich]

This is great, Steve! Thanks!