So many times we've heard people say that the oil filter efficiency doesn't really do anything to help reduce engine wear.
See Section 8 Oil filtration in the study linked below. There is other talk in the study about air and oil filtration, the effect on oil cleanliness and the correlation to engine wear, so the whole study is well worth reading IMO.
The only thing that's not clarified is what they really mean when they say the "oil filter rating" is 10u or 20u etc. I'd have to assume it means the "absolute efficiency" rating (Ie, basically meaning @98%).
Of course, as we all know, the air filter efficiency has much more effect on engine wear, but the paper does show that adding high oil filtering efficiency to keep the oil cleaner can eek out a measurable amount of engine wear reduction. Looking at Figure 18, it looks like an oil filter rated at 98% @ 20u would reduce ring wear by nearly 30% over a filter rated at 98% @ 50u. Efficiency would have to get down to around 98% @ 10u or better to really make wear drop off quickly. Hence, the need for bypass filtering systems. But keep in mind that any filter that's rated 98% @ 20u is also filtering out a pretty fair amount of particles below 20u (typically around 60% to 80% @ 5u).
Bottom line is cleaner oil is always better than dirtier oil when it comes to reducing engine wear, regardless of how you get there.
Pretty good study IMO. You can download the entire paper in PDF in the upper RH corner ("Download full-text" button).
https://www.researchgate.net/public...and_filtration_on_automobile_engine_wear
See Section 8 Oil filtration in the study linked below. There is other talk in the study about air and oil filtration, the effect on oil cleanliness and the correlation to engine wear, so the whole study is well worth reading IMO.
The only thing that's not clarified is what they really mean when they say the "oil filter rating" is 10u or 20u etc. I'd have to assume it means the "absolute efficiency" rating (Ie, basically meaning @98%).
Of course, as we all know, the air filter efficiency has much more effect on engine wear, but the paper does show that adding high oil filtering efficiency to keep the oil cleaner can eek out a measurable amount of engine wear reduction. Looking at Figure 18, it looks like an oil filter rated at 98% @ 20u would reduce ring wear by nearly 30% over a filter rated at 98% @ 50u. Efficiency would have to get down to around 98% @ 10u or better to really make wear drop off quickly. Hence, the need for bypass filtering systems. But keep in mind that any filter that's rated 98% @ 20u is also filtering out a pretty fair amount of particles below 20u (typically around 60% to 80% @ 5u).
Bottom line is cleaner oil is always better than dirtier oil when it comes to reducing engine wear, regardless of how you get there.
Pretty good study IMO. You can download the entire paper in PDF in the upper RH corner ("Download full-text" button).
https://www.researchgate.net/public...and_filtration_on_automobile_engine_wear