Summary details
Industry
Water utility
Asset type
Borehole pumps at a freshwater pumping station
Issue
Monitoring underground pumps that other techniques cannot reach
Product used
Benefit
Impeller fault detected months ahead, and pump failure predicted to within a couple of days.
The situation
A water utility installed permanent Inpod units in the motor control cabinets of six pumps at a freshwater pumping station. Two of these were borehole pumps, which were the customer’s main concern.
Borehole pumps are especially hard to monitor. They sit underground, out of reach, and can fail in many different ways, many of which other monitoring techniques would not detect.
What we found
After about a year of monitoring, the system had picked up a range of problems on the two borehole pumps. Four months later, we advised that one pump should be replaced because of an impeller-related problem, and predicted when maintenance would be needed.
The result
To test the accuracy of the prediction, the customer left the pump running until it failed. It failed within a couple of days of the date we had predicted.
Because Inpod is installed in the motor starter panel and monitors both electrical and mechanical condition, nothing needs to be fitted to the pump itself. This makes it well suited to underground, submerged and other hard-to-reach equipment.
See how we could help your equipment
Tell us which machines keep you up at night. In a free 10-minute demo, we’ll show you what MBVI condition monitoring could find on them, and whether a P100 test, an on-site diagnostic survey or permanent Inpod monitoring is the right place to start.
Prefer to talk now? Call 0333 772 0748 or email info@faradaypredictive.com.