20-01: Vibration Monitoring and Instrument Control in Cooling Towers

Cooling towers are an important component for refineries, power generation plants, and many other industrial process facilities. Monitoring the cooling tower condition and conducting proper machinery control provide enormous advantages to production. Great benefits in avoiding downtime losses can be achieved through predictive and preventive maintenance. Vibration is one of the key parameters that is used to provide early warning of machine failure. In this paper, vibration fundamentals are briefly elaborated, and then followed by a discussion of vibration monitoring requirements for cooling tower applications. In the end, an optimal vibration detection solution for cooling towers is explored.