Extremely high particulate contamination source and remedy at a roll mill

Problem

Untreated high levels of particulate contamination have resulted in the costly remedy of emptying a 2500 gallon reservoir and replacing the Meropa 460 gear oil. The system includes a high flow, low pressure pump delivering gear oil to four main gearboxes in the roll mill with only a single pressure filter. The return flow exceeds 600 gallons per minute intermittently, and there is no return filtration or a kidney-loop system. The worst ISO cleanliness code came back at 26/23/17. Due to the high levels of both water and particulate contaminates in the reservoir, it has become expected that annually the mill will shut the system down, evacuate the oil and wipe down the reservoir and refill. This is costly and does nothing to treat the ingression of said contaminates. Compelled to help his customer, the mill’s oil marketer requested assistance from Oil Filtration System’s regional product specialist.

Solution

After performing a walk-down of the entire gearbox lube oil system, it became apparent that the system simply did not have the needed filtration protection, especially for an environment so heavily ladened with airborne contaminates, as well as those introduced via poor seals, rain and leaking heat exchangers.

OFS recommended the following:

• Use of a filter skid using 12-micron, Beta 1000 filter elements and change to 7 micron when sample results dictate.

• Recommend filter skid hose locations for both the inlet and discharge of “clean” lubricant filter skid.

• Increase the sampling of the oil

• Run the filter skid continuously at 50 percent of maximum flow for a more effective filtration of the heavily contaminated fluid.

From an ISO cleanliness code as high as 26/23/17 to a current reading of 23/17/12, levels have continually declined at a dramatic rate. Our targeted ISO code is 17/16/13.