Water operation facilities face a continual battle to increase reliability, reduce costs and save both water and energy. One of the greatest culprits is that of seal and packing failure – something that is exacerbated by many of the challenges faced by maintenance teams, including:
- An ageing infrastructure
- Environmental regulations
- Water consumption
- Energy consumption
- Safety
One of the biggest issues is knowing when and where leaks will or could occur. The only way to do this is through 24/7 monitoring, which isn’t possible to do with manual surveillance.
Enter Chesterton Connect – a strategically engineered and deceptively simple addition that provides constant remote monitoring. With this information, maintenance teams are fully equipped to understand the cause of repeated seal and packing failure.
Chesterton Connect: a revolutionary process monitoring tool
There are many reasons that seals can fail. Despite the best repair and maintenance efforts, the cause can be challenging to find. Some reasons for failure include temperature changes, vibrations or good old-fashioned user error.
Chesterton Connect has been designed to collect 24/7 data to help determine when and why leaks occur. The tool is simple to attach to assets, such as pumps, mixers, agitators and other rotating equipment. It then gets to work, constantly monitoring for the following:
- Vibrations
- Process temperature
- Surface temperature
- Process pressure
Once installed, it’s used in conjunction with a user-friendly app that allows you to set thresholds that, when exceeded, will immediately inform you of the event. The data can easily be exported to fully analyse how the equipment operates, and this allows maintenance teams to determine the reasons behind leaks and take the necessary preventative action.
Chesterton Connect is designed to withstand harsh environments, has an intrinsically safe version and is a valuable tool for increasing operational and environmental responsibilities.
One example was flush issues in a slurry pump in Sweden. Despite installing advanced sealing solutions and the Chesterton SpiralTrac to clean the seal chamber, sporadic leaks still occurred.
The answer? Retrofitting a Chesterton Connect unit to monitor the seal. The data soon showed that user error was to blame. During the night, there was often a failure to deploy the flush water switch. Once this information was available, the work schedule and necessary staff training were actioned to increase reliability. These tweaks led to the pump running as expected without any failures.
This remote monitoring system is only one of the innovative solutions designed by sealing specialists, Chesterton, to mitigate unsatisfactory operations within the water/wastewater industries.
From seals to lubricants, industrial coatings to wireless monitoring, Chesterton’s world-leading products are known across the globe.
Discover more about the industry-specific advancements or visit https://www.chestertoncustomseal.com.au/partners-chesterton-products/chesterton-equipment-monitoring/.
This sponsored editorial was brought to you by Chesterton Customseal. For more information, visit chestertoncustomseal.com.au.
