Introduction

Irving Materials, Inc. is a building materials supplier that operates in the Midwest and southern United States. IMI Aggregates, a division of the company, provides crushed stone, sand, and gravel from their many Indiana locations.

One IMI Aggregates site has several dewatering basins that are designed to capture rain, groundwater, and seepage water. The basins are located in remote areas of the quarry and help to keep water away from production pits.

In a typical quarry, these types of basins may flood after heavy rainfall, causing water to overflow into the production area. This can cause equipment failure, resulting in downtime. An hour of downtime could cost thousands of dollars; so an outage from flooding can add up fast, especially during heavy rainfalls, which may occur several times a year.

As part of IMI Aggregates’ risk mitigation planning, they wanted to prevent this from happening at their operation. They looked for a monitoring system to provide instant notifications of such problems as pump failure, power outages, phase loss, and rising water to provide predictive warnings.

Condition Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance

Before seeking out a system like Perceptiv, IMI Aggregates personnel monitored pumps through visual inspection. Monitoring this way could take hours, and it was done more frequently with increased rain and storms. IMI Aggregates knew that there was a better way to monitor.

The Perceptiv Intelligent Reliability Solutions team at Regal Rexnord suggested a 24/7 monitoring solution for the quarry as a means to provide visibility of the pump operation, water levels, motor phase loss, and motor power. By having the ability to monitor production assets, IMI Aggregates can now ensure process optimization that helps to prevent pits from flooding.

IIoT Monitors Pump Performance

Using the industrial internet of things (IIoT) to monitor pump performance, the solution IMI Aggregates found has the hard-ware, software, and cloud-based server to measure a variety of machine health parameters on the pump systems operating at the company’s site. The online system monitors pump operation, water levels, motor phase loss, motor power, and communication status, providing web-based access to plant operation.

A battery backup ensures the availability of power in case of a lightning strike or another power loss event. There is also a built-in notification if cellular coverage is lost.

Also, IMI Aggregates personnel can check the quarry’s dewater-ing basin pump health and water levels from anywhere using a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

A Flexible System

Systems were supplied in a NEMA-rated enclosure that contains the data acquisition hardware for signal processing, power supply and terminations for power and signal leads, and remote access to the cloud-based server. The systems are modular and flexible so that any number of sensor inputs can be accommodated. Factory testing was done before the solution went into the field, and installation was very straightforward when completed after a three-month trial.

Uninterrupted Operation

Now during a weather event, quarry personnel can immediately be dispatched to take proactive measures. This solution — which includes a dashboard via the internet and application program interfaces (APIs) — advises company personnel and is more efficient because all the data related to the facility operation, including motor and pump status, reside there.

With the new tech in place, IMI Aggregates does not miss notifications if water levels rise. Personnel can proactively manage motors and pumps, addressing issues prior to flooding.

If a complication with a motor or pump surfaces, personnel can now do a fix before water rises and creates a flood condition. Or, if water levels increase too fast, portable diesel-powered pumps can be brought in to lower them.

“Twenty-four hour, seven days a week monitoring definitely helps with keeping an eye on the production and making us immediate-ly aware of any issues,” says Craig Gibson, plant superintendent at IMI Aggregates-Pendleton. “We chose Regal Rexnord, as they are very innovative and have the engineering backing to build the product that we were after. We’re gaining production due to less downtime when we do have issues with pump power, supply power or water levels.”

Potential for Expansion

When choosing this solution, the company wasn’t looking for “bells and whistles,” such as vibration monitoring or motor an-alytics. But if needed, those things are now possible. While IMI Aggregates’ current solution centers around monitoring the motor and pump systems, it provides a platform for a more extensive smart and connected quarry operation. There’s no limit to what could be connected. When ready, the customer can easily add information from their scale houses, record the number or truck loads leaving, track workers on their site, monitor electrical usage, and more.

Since its initial installation, IMI Aggregates has implemented this predictive tech in two other locations with multiple pump systems.

NEMA is believed to be the trademark and/or trade name of National Electrical Manufacturers Association and is not owned or controlled by Regal Rexnord Corporation.