Wireless sensors for predictive maintenance of rotating equipment in research reactors

Research reactors such as the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have a long history of service to the nation and are expected to continue to operate successfully for many more years. The HFIR facility uses numerous motors, compressors, fans, and turbines which need systematic maintenance and can therefore benefit from advanced Predictive Maintenance (PdM) techniques that have become available over the last decade. These techniques can be used for numerous applications such as equipment and process health and condition monitoring, reliability assessment, aging management, life extension, troubleshooting, safety improvements, and process optimization. HFIR currently incorporates some of these PdM techniques, but lacks a large compliment of test sensors for PdM. Additionally, adding more sensors and wiring would be problematic, expensive, and time consuming. Fortunately, wireless sensors have emerged over the last few years that can fill this gap. This paper describes an on-going Research and Development (R&D) effort funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to establish the feasibility of wireless sensors for PdM of rotating equipment in research reactors. The SBIR project will be conducted at the HFIR facility and should lead to actual testing of wireless sensors using HFIR as a test-bed for the technology. It is anticipated that the results of this work will also help with eventual deployment of wireless sensors not only in research reactors, but also in power reactors.