Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA) announces that a commercial vibration monitoring application using ARA’s patented Extended Range Radio Frequency (ERRF) communications platform has received approval from CSA Group, an international testing organization, for operation in Class 1, Division 2 Hazardous Areas. ERRF provides extensive communications coverage over large industrial facilities without the use of repeaters or mesh networks. This milestone demonstrates the potential for offering this capability in a wide spectrum of industrial environments including the hazardous areas found in oil and gas refineries.
ARA partnered with IMI Sensors, a division of PCB Piezotronics, Inc., to develop the Echo® Wireless Vibration Monitoring System to provide industrial facility personnel with insight into the operational health of industrial machinery. The Echo® system periodically measures, transmits, and performs trend analysis of vibration information allowing for detection and diagnosis of equipment faults prior to failure. The system uses both standalone and junction box sensor configurations to provide economical, flexible deployment. The standalone wireless vibration sensor efficiently expands the number of data points being monitored. The eight channel junction box converts existing sensors to wireless, providing an economic way to increase equipment operational awareness. Both wireless configurations are ideal for gaining insight into equipment failures early without expensive wired sensor deployment or labor-intensive manual measurements in dangerous or hazardous areas. Possible vibration monitoring applications include placement on motors, pumps, and fans; especially those in remote, inaccessible, and hazardous locations. This new certification contains approval for Class 1, Div. 2, Groups A, B, C and D, T4 (-20° C < Ta < 70° C).
The ERRF communications platform used by the Echo® Vibration Monitoring System complements predictive maintenance programs in oil and gas refining facilities. By supplementing the collection of route-based data on healthy machines, the Echo® system allows plant operators to focus their valuable technical manpower on higher value tasks, such as fault analysis to diagnose unhealthy machinery. It also enables the collection of machine heath monitoring data in hazardous areas, which eliminates the need to have a skilled worker enter these dangerous places to collect routine measurements. The risk and cost of monitoring hard-to-access machines is greatly reduced when the Echo® system is introduced into a predictive maintenance program.
ARA’s ERRF communications platform is a low power RF platform that provides revolutionary range performance in remote areas or challenging RF environments such as dense industrial environments. This technology is highly effective at transmitting small amounts of data over long distances with very robust data privacy and security. The radio consumes low power and does not require a wireless mesh, network, or repeater. ARA licenses the ERRF technology for use in commercial applications. Potential applications include industrial machine monitoring (vibration, temperature, flow, pressure, pH, torque, noise), remote environmental or infrastructure monitoring (bridges, pipelines, railways, air quality, noise contamination), and facility/perimeter security. Integration with existing wireless products for use in long range or challenging RF applications is also possible.
For more information about ERRF, visit the ARA website at: www.ara.com/errf/
