Expand your vibration program

to new heights.

Cooling Tower Monitoring

Wireless Vibration Monitoring for Motor and Gearbox Combination
 Monitoring your cooling towers
presents a unique set of challenges

Cooling towers are particularly complex to monitor – they have many of the same
characteristics as other rotating equipment, but come with a unique set of challenges.
Cooling tower fans operate under different load conditions. They often only run at peak
load for short periods. With differing stresses over a prolonged period, the mechanical
components can develop degraded performance, which leads to failure. As with any
rotating equipment, bearing and gear failures, misaligned drive shafts, and excessive
vibration are common.
But the structure of a cooling tower makes collecting vibration data on the gearbox
difficult and dangerous without permanently installed sensors. Because the gearbox
is a typical failure point, lack of feedback on the machine’s health puts you at risk for
unexpected failure.
Predictive diagnostics can identify the following types of faults in cooling towers:

Imbalance Resonance

Water intrusion Misaligned gears

Misaligned drive shaft Bent shaft

Rolling element bearing failure Damaged couplings

Chipped, broken or worn gear teeth Lubrication problems

Structural and mechanical looseness

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Simplify vibration monitoring of a cooling tower fan

Access to continuous information allows you to detect problems before they lead to failure.
As part of Emerson’s wireless sensing network solution, the AMS 9420 Wireless Vibration
Transmitter provides insight into the health of cooling tower gearboxes and motors.
Vibration alerts warn of pending problems, enabling further investigation to detect and
diagnose the fault so maintenance can be scheduled.
Overall vibration with embedded temperature measurement will identify developing
mechanical faults. Emerson’s unique PeakVue™ technology provides advanced
diagnostics for early indication of bearing and gearbox faults. Vibration energy bands
enhance trending and alarming, making it easier to interpret the data. More detailed
information can be accessed through high resolution spectra and waveform data.
Trend values can be compared against appropriate alert levels, informing you when the
condition of the gearbox or motor is deteriorating — as well as providing the underlying
cause of the problem.
Vibration monitoring data is communicated over a self-organizing network, removing the
additional costs associated with running cables.

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 Diagnose vibration faults on mechanical equipment

The AMS 9420 delivers insight on the health and performance of previously inaccessible
cooling tower gearboxes and motors. Vibration diagnostic data allows reliability specialists
to analyze and troubleshoot developing issues.

AMS Software Applications
„„ Asset dashboard displaying Looseness
health of the asset, sensor, Excessive coupling wear can
and transmitter lead to looseness. Bearing
looseness can also cause
„„ High resolution spectra, severe problems on the
waveform data, and vibration motor or gearbox, which
energy bands for enhanced are particularly important
trending and analysis to detect.

AMS 9420 Wireless
Vibration Transmitter
LAN Network
(control system)

Smart Wireless Gateway

or other WirelessHART gateway

Standard accelerometer Imbalance

The impeller often has holes in the
blades to remove condensation. These
Accelerometer with embedded temperature
can become filled with water, causing
imbalance. Other causes of increased
imbalance are a crack, bent shaft, or
missing shaft keyway. Imbalance can be
aggravated by resonance.

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 Bearing Defects
Bearings often operate under
heavy, variable load and extreme
environmental conditions. Because
of the force applied to bearings in a
cooling tower, defects often progress
quickly and lead to friction, bearing
damage, and gearbox failure.

Shaft Misalignment Broken/Chipped/Worn Teeth

Due to the length of the shaft Shaft misalignment causes
in a cooling tower and the thermal increased load on the input gear,
changes that the shaft experiences, which causes bad meshing of
misalignment is a common issue. the gears and generates debris.
Stress inside the shaft can damage Damaged and misaligned gears can
couplings, cause bearing fatigue, result in failure of the gearbox.
and even lead to shaft breakage.

Coupling Issue Insufficient Lubrication

Excessive shaft misalignment The extreme conditions of the cooling
can damage the coupling, tower often lead to issues with lubrication.
which can lead to shaft Bearing wear and gear teeth damage
separation. Severe coupling caused by insufficient lubrication
damage can lead to gearbox contributes to premature equipment
failure, damaged shafts, failure. However, the inaccessibility of a
and rotor cracks. cooling tower makes it virtually impossible
to perform accurate grease and oil analysis.

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 Access data for valuable information

Collecting data from the rotating assets inside your cooling tower is just the first step.
Accessing, understanding, and sharing the information from that data is critical to
identifying developing faults and avoiding unexpected shutdowns.
Advanced diagnostic data can be displayed and trended in AMS Machinery Manager
software. The Machinery Manager dashboard displays the health of the motor and
gearboxes being monitored along with detailed diagnostic data such as vibration energy
bands and thumbnail spectra for discovering imbalance, misalignment, and mechanical
looseness. Using PeakVue technology, users can separate stress waves from overall
vibration data for accurate, early identification of wear on bearings and gearboxes.
The comparison of vibration data to an alert level provides both an alarm notification
when the asset condition is deteriorating and information about the underlying cause of
the problem. This allows operators to take action to protect the asset, while maintenance
personnel can diagnose the root cause and schedule work. Now with the introduction of
Emerson’s Plantweb Optics collaboration software, key personnel can be alerted on their
mobile device to the overall health or developing problems in critical assets. Plantweb
Optics allows users to connect back to AMS Machinery Manager or AMS Device Manager
for more data to determine the appropriate course of action.
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Emerson offers integrated solutions for cooling towers

The AMS 9420, together with AMS software, provides an early warning of vibration problems. This is just one of a portfolio of
integrated wireless technology for cooling towers.

Rosemount Pressure Transmitter Rosemount DP Flowmeter

Detects variations in discharge pressure, an early Provides high performance flow measurements
warning of impending suction strainer plugging, to give valuable insight into cooling tower
which can lead to cavitation, impeller damage, operation. Cooling water supply and return
and seal failure in cooling tower pumps. flows are an indication of cooling tower
performance and can indicate potential
problems with an associated pump.

Rosemount Level Transmitter Rosemount Temperature Transmitter

Provides high/low level indication of water level Enables temperature measurements to
in the cooling tower system. determine heat transfer efficiency in cooling
towers. Ideal for this high-performance
application to enable optimization of cooling
tower at a lower cost.

Rosemount Guided Wave Radar Rosemount Dual-Input Analyzer

Use with the Wireless THUM Adapter Use with the Wireless THUM Adapter and Toroidal Conductivity Sensor

Enables continuous measurement of the Monitors conductivity, an indication of dissolved

water basin level, ensuring adequate supply solids concentration (leading to build-up of
of cooled water for the heat exchangers scale), so that adjustments to blowdown rate
while preventing overfills. can be made.

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Streamline maintenance and
maintain throughput by knowing
the health of your cooling towers.

Emerson – Reliability Solutions Emerson – Reliability Solutions Emerson – Reliability Solutions Emerson – Reliability Solutions Emerson – Reliability Solutions
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