Are You Practicing Oil Hygiene?

By RAY GARVEY, Engineer, Emerson Process Management

It is amazing how vastly different the oil hygiene practices are in the industrial plants that I visit. Plants with good oil hygiene practices are including important elements, such as:

• Contamination control
• Filtration
• Particle-counts with size-distribution
• Wear debris analysis, resulting in clean lubrication systems, while plants with poor oil hygiene have contaminated lubrication systems.

In spite of this logical correlation between clean systems and the degree to which particle-counts and wear debris analysis are practiced, you can usually find both extremes within the same industry. For example, I have personally found an aluminum plant and a power plant each with poorest hygiene and in the dirtiest oil category; but have also seen best hygiene and the cleanest oil category in other aluminum and power generation plants. So while the benefits of a "clean oil" plant (great success with few surprises) are obvious, they are not often shared across the industry.

Oil hygiene is that simple: keep it clean, dry, fit-for-use, and monitor the wear debris. Otherwise you will surely experience abrasion, corrosion, fatigue, and adhesion, all of which degrade load-bearing surfaces and shorten machine life.

ORAL HYGIENE
How do you know when someone doesn't practice good oral hygiene? They experience tooth decay, gingivitis, and usually bad breath. In this day and age everyone should understand how very important it is to brush and floss daily to maintain healthy teeth and gums. And we know these factors can directly relate to whether or not we will have our own teeth when we get older.

Like many children, I didn't understand the value of brushing and flossing. Until the age of 12 I didn't take very good care of my teeth. Fortunately my father’s medical benefits paid for lots of reactive maintenance. I now have a mouth full of root canals, gold caps, and 35 year-old fillings. Although my oral hygiene habits did improve with the introduction of some parental whip cracking, the damage was already done. But at least I experienced almost no cavities after that time.

Because of everything we've learned about oral hygiene, my kids don’t have cavities (at least the ones old enough to have teeth). And most of you don’t have fillings or root canals either, because someone listened to the dentist or at least to commercials promoting dental products. As a result, you reap the benefits of good oral hygiene.

OIL HYGIENE
A lot of people treat oil hygiene like I treated oral hygiene as a youngster. In light of the strong benefits of good oil hygiene, it’s hard to understand how individual plants with really bad practices can be so comfortable with the way they are doing things.

Figure 1 illustrates a quick graph of my industrial visits and observations. The results prove once again that good oil hygiene leads to clean lubrications systems:

Figure 1.

In spite of this logical correlation between clean systems and the degree to which particle-counts and wear debris analysis are practiced, you can usually find both extremes within the same industry.

Unfortunately, poor oil hygiene is rampant in industry. Like so many other proactive maintenance actions, you can ignore oil hygiene for a long time and never realize that this is the root cause of so many ailments. Take a serious and impartial look at your own oil hygiene practices:

• Is your oil clean, dry, and fit-for-use?
• Do you regularly do wear debris analysis?
• Do you believe these practices are important?
• Are you so covered up that you don’t have time to consider the condition of your lubrication systems?
• Are you letting your supplier take care of your oil so you think it is handled?

Face the facts, either you have good oil hygiene or you don’t. If you don’t, then just fix it, everyone benefits. It is the right thing to do and it pays off very well in the long run.

CAN YOU DO TOO MUCH OIL HYGIENE?
Yes, there is a point where the cost will exceed the benefit, but most industrial plants are at the other end of the spectrum where benefits far outweigh costs.

Like any other hygiene factor, enough is enough. When the oil is clean, dry, and fit for use… there is not much benefit to cleaning it again or changing it again. You will want to set target cleanliness levels (TCLs), for particulate contamination and for moisture contamination. You will want to set limits for condemning used oils. Below these limits you can spend a lot of money and even introduce new problems. Remember that oil drains are intrusive… possibly causing problems such as leaks, incorrect lubricant, system contamination, or even personal injury.

A presentation by Grahame Fogel stated it could cost a dollar to remove one gram of dirt from the oil. In another presentation by Parker… a graphic illustration was given of someone adding a teaspoon of dirt (maybe ten grams) every minute, simulating what may be taking place in your lubrication systems.

I don’t know what assumptions went into these two illustrations and it may not be appropriate to put statements from these different sources in the same paragraph... however, I do know that contamination control is a balancing act… quite simply, you have sources and you have removal points. By setting TCLs and measuring particle counts with size distributions, you are able to apply your continuous improvement efforts most effectively.

Manage your subscription to LubeTalk, using the SUBSCRIPTIONS area of this newsletter. You can also signup by visiting lubetrak.com. For more information, call toll-free 1.866.LUBETRAK (1.866.582.3872)