Technical blog

PROBLEM SOLVING: CLEAN OIL

The problem

A customer of us claimed problems on bearing lubrication on a series of high speed rotating rolls, moreover there were clogging problems on filter elements, even with self-cleaning filters. The plant is very complicated and utilizes a big amount of oil (about 70.000lts). To protect the components, the machine builder opted for very sophisticated self-cleaning filters, very expensive, based on wire mesh filter elements. This systems, born to filter engine oils, hydraulic plants in marine applications and process fluids or water, even if doing correctly their job in the best way possible, just for the use of wire mesh elements, weren’t able to guarantee a satisfying level of cleanliness.


The cause

Making a microscope check of the fluid, we discovered that the oil was contaminated from an high rate of solid particles with a size near or slightly bigger than the nominal filtration rate, even in the pressure line that it’d be the cleanest point in the system. Infact in the pressure line, the line that feed and lubricate the system, the fluid must be cleaned as much as possible, in contrary case, the contamination would create an abrasive sludge that could be able to damage or erode the parts that comes in contact with the oil.

The solution

The solution was to clean the oil with an external system with high retention capacity and efficiency, utilizing unconventional filters at a  low cost, able to trap the elevated quantity of suspended particles in the fluid,  applying it with the machine running so to clean and wash all the system. Our customer is evaluating the installation of some filters on the pressure line now, utilizing absolute filtration elements, so to stop all particles that actually come from the wire mesh elements.
 

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