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A production facility in a remote Alaskan oil field is serviceable only by an airstrip, as no roads exist. Machinery
engineering support for the facility is provided from another location 30 miles away, so provisions were made for
remote assessment of machinery condition. Bently Nevada’s 3500 monitors and Data Manager® 2000 (DM2000) software
were chosen for the project, with remote display capabilities provided via the company’s wide area network.
Process and asset data are integrated into the system, allowing engineers access to relevant process parameters
affecting the machinery. DM2000 has been instrumental in the diagnosis and monitoring of shaft cracks on their
crude oil shipping pumps. Recently, operators received an alarm for high vibration on one of the units and the
machine was shut down. The machinery engineer viewed historical trends and diagnostic plots using DM2000
(first remotely, then on site) and based on the data, confidently diagnosed a potentially cracked pump shaft.
Subsequent inspection confirmed this, and the pump was removed from service and sent to a repair facility for shaft
replacement. Sensitized to the possibility of a shaft crack on the other (identical) units, the machinery engineer
established some simple criteria for monitoring the pumps locally using DM2000’s acceptance region trending / alarming
capabilities, and established actions to take if problems were noted. Several weeks after the first incident, a shaft
crack on another shipping pump was also detected.
The customer was quick to point out that they would not have detected and diagnosed the first cracked shaft,
nor obtained early warning on the second cracked shaft, without the 3500 and DM2000 systems. A total of
five pumps of this design exist at the site, and the three that have yet to receive new shafts are being monitored
closely using the DM2000 system. Damage to the pumps from a broken shaft would result in up to $200,000 in repair costs
per unit, not counting lost production.
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