Air Products Selects SWANTECH's SWANview System to Monitor Health of Industrial Blowers.

Business Editors/Technology Writers

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 4, 2002

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., the world's only combined gases and chemicals company, has selected SWANTECH's SWANview(TM) systems to predict and detect defects on industrial blowers. Headquartered in eastern Pennsylvania, Air Products is a market leader in the global electronics and chemical processing industries, and a longstanding innovator in basic manufacturing sectors, including steel, metal, glass and food processing. The company's choice of SWANview was based on the need to detect the presence of damage and wear on vital industrial blowers in an inherently noisy and high-vibration environment.

Minimizing Down Time

Air Products determined a need for an early and accurate evaluation of the health of the equipment to minimize down time. Stress Wave Analysis (SWAN(TM)) is a digital means of detecting and analyzing sound that travels in a machine structure at ultrasonic frequencies.

Fred Flemming, staff machinery engineer at Air Products, said that the SWANview system's early detection capabilities and ease of use were key elements in selecting the technology. "Stress Wave Energy is an excellent indication of the overall health of a machine because it is a direct measurement and comparison of the amount of friction and shock occurring in a machine," he said. "These blowers are subject to a lot of shaking forces caused by gas pulsations. As a result, conventional casing-mounted accelerometers are overwhelmed by this noise. It is hard to discriminate between vibration related to the internal health of the blower and the noise," he said. "The SWAN technology is not affected by the shaking and, therefore, we get a window into the true mechanical condition of the blower. SWANview's simplicity of use is important, as an easy-to-read `red-yellow-green' indicator specifies the health of the equipment. These plants are generally unmanned and the operators control them remotely. The ability to use SWANview to diagnose problems from our central engineering offices has been a big plus."

For units at Air Products, a unique baseline was not needed on every machine. Friction levels between like machines operating in a healthy condition are very similar, thus one properly established baseline can be used to verify whether an identical machine is operating at optimum levels. According to Fred Flemming, this was another benefit of the Stress Wave technology. "SWANview reduces the time, resources and data compilation required by other condition monitoring methods," he said.

Excellent Resolution

Stress Wave Analysis is an extremely sensitive technology that utilizes structure-borne sound as opposed to measuring the bulk motion of a machine. Using SWAN technology, the SWANview System provides accuracy superior to vibration technology especially in the earliest stages of failure progression. Additionally, it is able to quantifiably measure the magnitude of the defect, and isolate the fault location. This technique provides a degree of resolution into the dynamics of a machine previously unattainable using traditional diagnostic methods.

The SWANView System was specifically designed to support engineering and maintenance efforts by providing the information needed to determine the health of mission critical equipment faster and earlier. The system is flexible and has been proven in numerous aerospace, utility, marine, propulsion, industrial and turbine applications.

SWANTECH is dedicated to the innovation, design and development of diagnostic tools that detect and measure even slight shock and friction events that occur between contact surfaces in operating machinery. SWANTECH delivers the power of precise machine condition information with patented Stress Wave Analysis (SWAN(TM)) technology. SWAN detects Stress Wave Energy and enables the separation of these high-frequency stress waves from the much lower frequency range of operating machinery vibration and audible noise. This process detects flaws and problems well before vibration technology.

Contact: Don Silver or Caren Berg, Boardroom Communications [phone] [e-mail]