Applied Empirical Equipment Condition Monitoring: A Review

1. Applied Empirical Equipment Condition Monitoring: A Review Ramesh (“Rudy”) Shankar rshankar@signatechsystems.com Signatech Systems, Inc. Solving tomorrow’s energy problems today TM

2. Outline • Historical perspective on the use of ECM in utility and other industries • Survey of empirical methods used in ECM • Relative strengths • Model Development Considerations • Vendors and software in this space • Utilities and applications in the utility industry • EPRI and other reference material • Best practices

3. What is ECM? • Equipment Condition Monitoring is a general term which may be interpreted in numerous ways. • First principles modeling and monitoring tools • Vibration analysis: continuous, or route-based • Maintenance testing • Other techniques such as Motor Current Signature Analysis, Noise Analysis, etc. • Empirical Modeling and Monitoring

4. What is an Empirical Model? • Empirical modeling refers to any kind of modeling based on empirical observations rather than on mathematically describable relationships. • Simply: data-driven modeling

5. What is On-Line Monitoring? • The monitoring of any aspect of a process while the plant is operating without affecting the process or plant operation. • Numerous activities fall under this generic category • The term is most often used to describe process modeling techniques (first principles or empirical), applied to process equipment or systems, that do not require manual intervention*. • * i.e. does not include vibration rounds, maintenance tests, the collection of data without an interpretive model.

6. On-Line Monitoring Flow Diagrams • Empirical • First Principles

7. What are we talking about? • In general the application of empirical modeling tools can be described as: OLM of Process Data (in plant database) using Empirical Models and interpreting the results to make Assessments on the Condition of the Monitored Equipment (ECA)