CASE STUDY

Detecting a Lubrication Failure on a Cooling Tower Fan Before It Caused Catastrophic Damage

The most dangerous failures are the silent ones. On a 24/7 cooling tower fan at a power generation plant, the automatic lubricators had quietly run out of battery and stopped dispensing grease — with no process in place to catch it. Predicore’s condition monitoring detected the resulting spike in vibration, traced it to a lubrication deficiency in the motor bearing, and guided a fix before it reached failure. The result: catastrophic bearing damage avoided, no unplanned stoppage, and the asset restored to normal range — plus a gap in the maintenance routine closed for good.

The Client & Asset

Client: Leading power generation company.

Monitored asset: A critical cooling tower fan running 24/7, where any unplanned bearing or gearbox failure triggers an immediate production stoppage and requires post-repair cleaning procedures before operations can resume. The asset sits outside standard daily inspection routes — visual checks alone cannot detect or track fault progression.

The Problem: A Silent Lubrication Deficiency

On August 30, the Wiver™ sensor detected a sudden increase in high-frequency vibration on the cooling tower fan motor. Predicore AI™ flagged the change in condition automatically, and the Monitoring Center issued an alert identifying a lubrication deficiency in the motor bearing as the probable cause — confirmed on visual inspection.

A post-intervention analysis revealed the root cause: the automatic lubricators had run out of battery and had stopped dispensing grease, with no periodic verification process in place to catch it. Without continuous vibration monitoring, this failure would have gone undetected until catastrophic bearing damage occurred.

The Solution: Manual Lubrication and a Process Fix

Following Predicore’s recommendations, the maintenance team performed a visual inspection and completed manual lubrication of the affected motor bearing. Vibration levels progressively returned to normal range, confirming the intervention was effective.

The team also identified the need to incorporate periodic verification of automatic lubricator batteries into their maintenance routine — closing the process gap that caused the fault in the first place.

Stats

Proven at scale. Trusted by operations that can’t afford to stop.

  • Avoided

    Catastrophic failure

  • Dead lubricator batteries — previously undetected

    Root cause identified

  • Avoided

    Unplanned production stoppage

  • Restored to normal range

    Asset condition

Frequently Asked Questions

How is a lubrication failure detected on a motor bearing? Continuous vibration monitoring picks up the high-frequency signals that rise when a bearing loses lubrication. The anomaly is flagged automatically and validated by analysts, allowing a fix before the bearing is damaged.

Why do automatic lubricators fail without anyone noticing? Battery-powered lubricators can run out of charge and silently stop dispensing grease. Without a periodic verification step, there’s no visual sign until the bearing starts failing — which is exactly why continuous monitoring matters.

Why do cooling tower fans need continuous monitoring? They run 24/7, often outside daily inspection routes, and a failure forces an immediate stoppage plus post-repair cleaning. Vibration monitoring tracks fault progression that visual checks alone can’t catch.

About Predicore

Predicore is a Maintenance Operations Intelligence platform that combines proprietary wireless sensors, purpose-built AI, and a 24/7 certified analyst team to detect equipment faults before they become failures — connecting asset risk with the people responsible for acting on it.