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Case History: Cooling Tower #1 |
The Problem:
A Power Company with a Combined Cycle Plant in Texas had a requirement to monitor their Cooling Tower Fans after a catastrophic failure occurred on one. The requirement included continuous monitoring along with access to buffered signals for analysis with a portable analyzer. The continuous monitoring of vibration overall values and alarming was to be done by the plant DCS which also made it easy to display the vibration values to the operators on their existing HMI screens. The DCS/Historian also supplied long term trending and storage for vibration values. An additional requirement was to minimize cabling and installation costs as the control room was about 200 meters from the cooling tower site.
The Cooling Tower was made up of 6 Cells each having a Motor, Jackshaft, Right Angle Gearbox and Fan Blade Assembly. After discussion the customer decided on 3 Accelerometers per Cooling Cell: Motor Inboard Bearing, Gearbox High Speed Input Bearing and Gearbox Low Speed Output Bearing.
The Solution: For durability and resistance to the environment the complete system except for sensors were mounted in a Fiberglass Nema 4X Enclosure and mounted centrally on the Cooling Tower. The Industrial Radio was mounted inside the enclosure as the fiberglass enclosure allowed the signal to pass through. An external switchable BNC connector was provided for the buffered dynamic signals for access by a data collector or analyzer.
A Fiberglass Nema 4X Enclosure was also used for the receiving or master radio mounted on top of the control room directly above the plant DCS. A Cat5e cable was installed from the receiving (master) radio to the input card of the DCS. As the system was tested by STI prior to shipment it immediately began working. The only thing the customer needed to do after installation was program the DCS with the IP Address and Modbus buffer locations.
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| CMCP5302 Two Channel Monitor |
 For smaller Cooling Towers or Fans STI's CMCP5302 Two Channel Monitoring System is used by many customers to monitor two bearings. The CMCP5302 is a complete monitoring system. You simply need to add two CMCP1100 Sensors for a complete installation. The CMCP5302 includes two CMCP530A Monitors with OK, Alert and Danger Relays, Bright Red LED Displays, 4-20 mA Outputs and CMCP515 Power Supply. The CMCP1100 Accelerometers are completely waterproof and are provided with a 316 Stainless Steel Case to handle the Cooling Towers environment. |
to STI's October 2011 Newsletter! We have received many questions and requests from our customers about Cooling Towers so we have elected to dedicate this issue to a "Cooling Tower Case History". As Cooling Towers do come in many sizes please keep in mind that we have scalable products that will fit your requirements no matter the size. Your requirement may be as simple as a single 
