Session: 05-07 Advanced Topics in Instrumentation (I)

Paper Number: 102617

102617 - Cloud Based Predictive Monitoring System for Steam Industrial Turbogenerator 

Steam turbogenerators have a wide application in the exploitation of thermal from the combustion of biomass, general waste to energy and natural gas.

In the current social and economic worldwide situation, ensuring the continuity of the industrial process, coupled with the availability of electricity production from non-fossil fuels, is a competitive advantage for biomass industries and waste incinerators.

In this context, with the aim of ensuring the required continuity of operation, Fincantieri has developed a remote monitoring system.

This diagnostic methodology is based on instrumentation installed together with special virtual sensors with the aim of detecting alerts and deviations from the machine's design operation, foreseeing the intervention of alarms and trips of the conventional control system.

The resulting increased machine availability results in a reduction of unscheduled downtime, reduced maintenance costs and therefore revenue for the plant owner.

From the on-field instrumentation, the control system signals are published in digital format (via OPC server), then processed by the monitoring system and distributed to an appropriate cloud. All historical operational data are stored, overcoming the limited memory capacity of local supervisory systems.

The signals are processed to generate additional sensors (called 'virtual sensors') that provide analytical and graphical information to speed up the diagnostical process in different areas of monitoring.

Within the main system characteristics, with reference to performance monitoring, thermo fluodynamic quantities are evaluated to calculate the isoentropic performance and track the machinery aging. With reference to rotor dynamics and bearing monitoring, appropriate functions were developed: starting from know-how as an OEM, on each turbine range, Fincantieri constantly develop an operational database to create the dedicated monitoring algorithms.

Continuous monitoring allows to verify the health status of components and to optimize the spare parts replacement planning.

The monitoring system is set to be applied also in existing turbo-generator by installation of additional instrumentation to allow the updating and the monitoring of all the relevant parameters.

Once the development phase was completed, the system was installed and tested in a first plant as a prototype. This phase made it possible, through the detected deviations, to take countermeasures to ensure the availability of the machine. Two powerplants are nowadays already monitored by remote.

Presenting Author: Antonio Sanguineti Fincantieri DSCM

Presenting Author Biography: Senior Business Development Engineer. Background in turbine design and test; coordination of turbomachinery projects, and coordination of turbogroup P.E.s'

Authors:

Antonio Sanguineti Fincantieri DSCM
Roberto Venuti Fincantieri DSCM
Antonio Violante Fincantieri SpA
Adriano Busi Fincantieri DSCM
Francesco Malavasi Fincantieri DSCM