As the world looks to decarbonise to try to reduce the impact of climate crises, there is more emphasis than ever on low-carbon technologies and renewable energy production. According to BloombergNEF, 2023 saw a new record for clean electricity, with more than 40% of the world’s electricity coming from zero-carbon sources, 14% from wind and solar.
What’s more, the global adoption of low-carbon technologies to replace carbon-emitting fossil-fuels, including electric vehicles (EVs) and hydrogen production puts electricity grids under enormous pressure to keep up with demand.
One thing to note about the energy industry is that it runs 24/7/365 days a year. While national grid services around the world are adept at keeping grids balanced – and many have market mechanisms to ensure that it is – each network comprises millions of critical parts that have to be maintained to protect the grid against mechanical failure. Today’s energy production processes are increasing in complexity, especially as environmental responsibilities tighten, and the requirements for sealing applications are more demanding than ever.
In every network of connected assets, the failure of any part can have an enormous knock-on effect, leading to compounded problems down the line. That’s certainly true in the energy sector and is why preventative maintenance is so important.
The unsung heroes of the energy industry
A critical part that is commonly overlooked is the humble bolt. In many ways they are taken for granted as fasteners, but bolted connections are used in almost every engineering sector and play a range of vital roles. When they fail, they can fail spectacularly.
Bolted flange connections are commonly used in renewable energy production, notably in the onshore and offshore wind industry where they connect blade assemblies to the hub. When, in January 2024, a blade fell off a wind turbine in Toledo, Ohio it was as a result of a failure in a bolted flange assembly. Fortunately, no one was injured, but the impact was felt across the whole fleet of wind turbines. The company had to shut down production, inspect every major bolted flange in each turbine and carry out controlled restarts. In fact, it replaced every blade bolt in the turbines, even those where no abnormality was found.
Stories like these, while alarming, can be prevented by remote monitoring of the status of bolt connections and understanding the cascading nature of bolt failure due to load transfers and fatigue.
Bolts are also widely used across the oil and gas industries in energy production. Critical components such as pumps, valves and heat exchangers require effective fastening for prevention of leaks. Bolts need to perform in high pressure, often corrosive and high temperature environments. Failures in these situations can lead to VOC (Volatile Organic Component) leakages with catastrophic results for workers’ safety and potentially harmful impact on the environment. In addition, during the installation process on a multi-bolt flange, tightening of one bolt can have an impact on the level of tightness on another bolt, leading to other risks. It is also a well-known fact within the energy sector that loose bolts can give rise to internal leakage in the case of valves.
It's so important to have confidence in the performance of fasteners at all times. But it’s not always straightforward to inspect them for corrosion, stress or deformation, especially when they are high up in a wind turbine or in high temperature, high pressure atmosphere. These are circumstances where remote monitoring really comes into its own.
Remote monitoring reveals hidden insight
At SCT, we have developed an end-to-end remote condition monitoring solution that directly monitors bolt tension. Using our Smart Washer technology to predict and prevent joint failures also minimises the cost and downtime associated with maintenance.
It’s not all torque
When you think about bolts and connections, it’s tempting to think mainly about torque. Torque is a measurement of the twisting force applied to the bolt head or nut. It’s a proxy measure of bolt tension, which can be affected by many factors including surface texture, rust, oil, thread condition and the type of material it is made from. Rather than monitoring torque, Smart Washer uses clamp force sensing technology to assess whether bolts are tight. We use clamp pressure because, during our rigorous testing processes in operational environments, we found that torque-based installation procedures can return errors of up to 70%. As incorrectly tightened fasteners have a significantly shorter operational life, it makes more sense to provide accurate clamp force measurements to ensure bolts are tight.
In the case of the wind turbine, the Smart Washer could alert maintenance teams to a fault in the assembly connecting the blade to the hub, as this would show up as transferring a higher load onto the blade bolts. Unattended, this would lead to faster fatigue and a potential cascading failure of multiple bolts. By providing clamp force data at installation, rather than less accurate torque, Smart Washer constant monitoring data would provide infrastructure managers with bolt preload forecasts for the next 90 days, plenty of time to carry out preventative maintenance.
Where there’s a bolt, there’s an opportunity
The advantages of Smart Washer technology aren’t limited to any sector. There is no shortage of environments where Smart Washer technology could make a material difference to operational efficiency, safety and sustainability. Fasteners, nuts and bolts, flanges have a part to play in everything from pumping to food production, from energy generation and distribution to waste materials recovery. In fact, everywhere that calls for a connection, secure joint or pressure. Smart Washer greatly benefits operational environments that are subject to severe loading, vibration or temperature cycling. Essentially, remotely monitoring what's happening to bolts in a network, pipeline or process, provides invaluable insight to reduce the possibility of costly leakages and failures.
Check out our Smart Washer technology features and watch the video here.
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