Emerson enhances vibration monitoring technologies to deliver actionable asset health data in hazardous environments

Redesigned AMS machinery health systems feature improved hardware that meets strict safety standards for reliable protection in the most extreme conditions

To help users further enhance the reliability of rotating assets, Emerson has upgraded this industry-leading portfolio of machinery health monitoring systems to deliver asset protection and fault prediction in more places and with faster response than ever before.

Both the AMS 6500 Machinery Health Monitor and AMS 2600 Machinery Health Expert systems have been redesigned to improve performance and fully comply with the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive and Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) Regulation. In addition, the AMS 6500 ATG protection system has been certified as meeting the International Electrotechnical Commission’s (IEC) risk reduction requirements for safety integrity level (SIL) 2, giving users added assurance that it will reliably deliver appropriate insight into the health of critical assets. 

The newly redesigned systems will include Modbus^TM compatibility and Emerson’s patented PeakVue^TM technology as standard features. Field-proven to be an effective and reliable indicator of mechanical damage severity, PeakVue filters out most vibration signals to focus on impacting, providing more effective and reliable indicators of overall asset health.

“Online monitoring helps organizations stay aware of moment-to-moment asset health, particularly on their most critical assets,” said John Turner, product manager for online prediction at Emerson Automation Solutions. “New features in the AMS product portfolio will give users essential and timely online monitoring data and help to improve compliance, even under the most restrictive conditions.”

The AMS 6500 and AMS 2600 systems, which help users effectively plan maintenance, now meet IEC 60068 standards for withstanding shock and vibration, allowing users to safely deploy them in harsh environments where ambient vibration and possible electrical shocks present the risk of damage, such as on wind turbines. A new processor boots faster, and the solid state drive (SSD) technology can handle transient file transfer 10 times faster, resulting in improved and more responsive asset prediction and process health analysis.

The new processor requires AMS Machinery Manager 5.61 with a firmware patch, or any higher version of AMS Machinery Manager. The AMS 6500 ATG advanced prediction application is compatible with AMS Machinery Manager 5.7 or higher. AMS 6500 prediction monitoring system cards are backwards compatible with all AMS 6500 hardware systems.

The AMS 6500 ATG system, which features embedded predictive diagnostics and optional advanced prediction capabilities, has received SIL 2 certification. Whether organizations need certified equipment to meet company guidelines or to comply with legal requirements, SIL ratings help users evaluate whether a specific technology meets the selected risk tolerance for essential equipment such as steam and gas turbines in power plants or critical refinery and nuclear industry assets.

“More and more organizations are finding they need SIL certified products to meet international standards and machine directives,” said Björn Müller, product manager for online systems and sensors at Emerson Automation Solutions. “SIL certification is one more way we can help customers achieve compliance while demonstrating our commitment to risk reduction.”