Oil cleanliness

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After years of talking about the importance, I finally got convinced to test and filter oil, since I was preaching cleanliness and Siemens was telling the power plants to change the oil or clean it.
So we tested the oil in their turbines, which to the naked eye looked clean. After pulling a sample through a 0.8 um membrane, this is what I found. (green line is 80 um - one hair-width)
Gloria_Contaminado.jpg

Magnifying it to 400x, it looked like this
sucio-micron.jpg


So we drained it (10,000 liters per turbine) and filtered it through Donaldson's 4 um at Beta 2000 filters, leaving it looking like this
Gloria_filtrado.jpg


limpio-micron.jpg


Impressive results. We now have another dozen turbines to filter, including the new ones Siemens wants us to do before commissioning them.
 
Here are pics. The key element here is the filters that have 7 layers of material laminated in them to provide 4um at beta 2000. They were originally designed for fuel, but can easily handle oils. I've run this series up through ISO 150 (at about 80F).


Dializador-frente-site.jpg

Dializador-trasero-site.jpg
 
That is quite a set up you have. How long does it take to pump 10,000 litres thru the filter rig? Are the elements changed after one turbine or, can several turins be serviced by one set of filter elements? If you have cut open a filter, pics would be interesting. Thanks Richard.

Oldtommy
 
The one in the picture is 1 hp gear pump and runs 30 liters per minute. For the big turbines we ran two 2 hp gear pumps, through two of these, giving 100 liters per minute. We pumped the oil into ten 1000 liter totes, cleaned the sumps (you can climb down and clean with protective gear, coming up for fresh air on a schedule). Then filtered going back in.
 
Just to add, it doesn't seem to matter what we throw at it, the oil comes out clean (obviously this turbine used up more of the filter capacity)

Another 10,000 liters that had been clogging filters in a turbine not yet commissioned. Had a hard time getting this through the 5 micron membrane
Yacuiba-sucio.jpg


After filtering
Yacuiba-filtered.jpg
 
I know this is an old thread but the patch (04/19/14) looks like rust particulate, Babbitt particulate and other ferrous mat'l. Did you notice a bathtub ring in the reservoir before you swabbed the unit? If this is a turbine, you may want to have a UC (Ultra centrifuge) test performed to eliminate any possibility of varnish.....
 
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