Reliable Tap Water Supply - Setting a Sustainable Standard
Cutting-edge technology predicts faults before they occur, securing uninterrupted access to clean tap water for residents
Industry:Municipal water supplyCustomer:Stadtwerke Elmshorn
More and more people are drinking tap water, which has many advantages: no laborious crate-pumping, no environmentally harmful transport routes, it is healthy and available at all times. But how can municipalities manage to guarantee this availability?
The public utilities in Elmshorn, in the greater Hamburg area, rely on technologies from Balluff. Through the targeted use of Balluff condition monitoring solutions, faults can be eliminated before they occur.
Find out how this works here:
Situation
To supply such a large area with fresh water, huge reservoirs are needed. Of course, these reservoirs are equipped with pumps to transport the water. The big danger for a constant water supply, however, is that a pump could fail unexpectedly, e.g. due to constant sedimentation. Since the pumps are located at a depth of about 15 meters, repairing them would be extremely time-consuming and costly. The question is: Is it possible to prevent failure? Do I need to prevent the failure at all, or is it enough to know when a failure might occur?
We asked ourselves these questions and came up with some interesting solutions and challenges.
Challenge
Looking at the application in detail, the challenges are obvious.
Accessibility of the pump:
The pump is located at a depth of 15 m under water and therefore cannot be subjected to regular visual or acoustic inspections. Continuous daily maintenance is therefore not possible.Environmental conditions:
Accessibility in itself is of course a major problem, but the use of sensors is also a challenge since the pump operates completely and permanently under water. Whatever the intended solution, any hardware used must also be able to operate continuously under water.Unexpected failures at unpredictable times:
Perhaps the most unpredictable challenge is the timing of failures. No one knows in advance what failure will occur or when it will occur.
Solution
With any major challenge, it is important to remember what is at the heart of the task. In this case, it is knowing the condition of the pump. When we know the condition of our pump, we know if we need to take action.
With the help of a small, almost inconspicuous sensor, the Balluff Condition Monitoring Sensor (BCM), you can record the condition of your equipment in the simplest way. In our case, a BCM was mounted directly on the pump housing. Since each pump generates a very specific, individual vibration profile, we were able to make use of this.
When the pump is new, every mechanical and electrical part works perfectly and the vibration profile of the pump is inconspicuous. However, as deposits build up in the pump over time, this profile changes - the condition of the pump changes.
The further the pump's vibration behavior deviates from the original profile, the more likely it is that action will be required.
"But the pump will still fail during maintenance" - this is true.
Solution
- The advantage is that you decide when and how much maintenance to perform. No more surprises from unexpected maintenance. Schedule maintenance well in advance so that personnel and materials are available and the water supply is not interrupted.
- Take the first step towards predictive maintenance and collect all relevant data from your production with our condition monitoring sensor.
- With the accompanying toolkit, we also save you valuable time and nerves during commissioning, because according to our customers, the toolkit is a true "plug and play solution".
Products
The BCM recognizes all the necessary data - vibration in three axes, contact temperature and acceleration
The centerpiece is our condition monitoring toolkit. This edge device collects all the data, visualizes it and sends it to a higher-level system.
Condition monitoring sensors
Condition monitoring toolkit
Condition monitoring sensors
- Function
-
Vibration analysis in time domain
Contact temperature monitoring - Vibration, frequency range
-
2…1800 Hz (±10 %)
2…2500 Hz (±3 dB) - Vibration, number of measuring axes
- 3
- Vibration, measuring range
- -16…16 g
- Contact temperature, measuring range
- -25…+70 °C
- Rated operating voltage Ue DC
- 24 V
- Interface
- IO-Link 1.1
- Connection
- Cable with connector, M12x1-Male, 3-pin, 1.5 m, PUR
- Housing material
- 1.4404 stainless steel
- IP rating
- IP67, IP68, IP69K
- Ambient temperature
- -25...70 °C
Condition monitoring toolkit
- Processor
- 1.8 GHz / 400MHz
- Working memory
- 2 GB RAM
- Connection slots
-
2x LAN: RJ45-Female, 8-pin
4x IO-Link: M8x1-Female, 4-pin, A-coded
PWR: Phoenix MC1.5/3-STF-3.81
USB: USB 2.0 Standard-A - Dimension
- 101 x 126 x 50 mm
- Data storage
- 8 GB EMMC