Predictive Maintenance for Oil and Gas Pumps
Industry
Oil and gas
Asset
Reciprocating mud pumps
Goal
Develop a predictive maintenance solution for early detection and diagnosis of mud pump failure
Impact
Predictronics' solution predicted mud pump seal failure at least one day in advance, allowing for proactive maintenance. This helped the company prevent unscheduled downtime and avoid hazardous leak events, which cost the business productivity, money and resources.
Overview
A global oil and gas contractor with a specialty in automated drilling equipment and rig components was looking to develop and validate health monitoring methods with the induced fault data collected on their test rig and use this knowledge to apply a health monitoring approach to their mud pumps in the field. At the time, the contractor was experiencing mud pump leak events, which are not only dangerous, but also environmentally hazardous. In addition, there was a need to distinguish between anomalies due to actual leak events and anomalies caused by sensor issues.
Solution
The customer provided Predictronics with data collected over the course of a year from test bed data sets and sensors located on the piston, suction and discharge sections of two pumps in the field. Predictronics team members utilized their experience in industrial applications and expertise in vibration-based analysis to pull crucial features from the provided data by considering vibration patterns in the frequency and time-frequency domain. These features were integral to the development of health assessment models. The models then helped determine key indicators of pump seal failure, as well as establish the accuracy and necessity of the utilized sensors.
Value
From Predictronics’ analysis, the contractor was able to ascertain the best sensor locations and identify possible sensor health issues that could occur in the field. The health and prediction models developed by Predictronics enabled the customer to predict mud pump failure at least one day in advance, allowing for proactive maintenance. This maintenance prevents hazardous leak events and unscheduled downtime, which cost the company productivity, money and resources.