Custom Steel Mill High Viscosity Gear Box Lubrication System
A contractor was tasked by one of their customers with replacing an old gear box oil lubrication system at a steel mill. The new system had to be designed to fit within a maximum space requirement, where heavy 460 weight gear oil from a large gear box would gravity drain down into the 200 gallon system, be recirculated, filtered and temperature controlled before being pumped back up to the gear box to be used for lubrication. The system would need to be designed with
- Remote High/Low Tank Oil Level Indication
- Oil Temperature Control – Via 15KW Low Watt Density Heater and Water Cooled Tube and Shell Heat Exchanger.
- Remote Particulate Filter Plugged Indication
- Remote Pump Flow On/Off Low Flow Indication
- Remote Oil Leak Indication
- Pump Motor and Oil Heater Overload Trip Indication
- Heater Over Temperature – Provided by thermocouple and backup mechanical thermostat.
- Remote Emergency All Stop Engaged
- Remote High Water Oil Contamination Indication via water sensor
- Provide an Oil Cleanliness Spec of 16/14/12 or better
MSC Filtration Technologies was unable to visit the customer, so the system was designed using dimensional constraints and minimum and maximum operating specifications provided by the contractor. A quote was provided, an order placed, approval drawings submitted, approval given, system built and delivered and has been working flawlessly to this day. Thus proving MSC Filtration Technologies really does provide flexible and innovative small company service but with big company results.
FilClean SHD Skid Cooling Tower Gear Box
A local combined cycle power plant was having difficulties maintaining cleanliness counts in the gear box oil of its cooling tower gear boxes. These individual gear boxes located on the roof of the cooling tower are used to drive the 12 fans which are in turn used to cool the condensate coming off of the Powerplants Heat Recovery Steam Turbine. These gearboxes were suffering from both over temperature of their oil systems during hot days along with high particulate contamination of the gear box 220 weight synthetic gear oil. Over temperature was causing coking of the oil and heavy particulate build up in it.
A FilClean™ SHD filter skid was installed to continuously kidney loop the oil from the gear box so to add both a level of cooling by recirculation along with particulate filtration of the oil.
After 1 hr. of running the temperature of the gear box oil dropped from 230F down to less than 190F and after 24 hrs. of running particulate contamination in the oil dropped from a high of iso code 22/20/19 down to 19/17/14. After 1 month of running particulate contamination had dropped below 17/15/13.
The Powerplant has purchased 3 other FilClean™ skids to install on other troublesome gear boxes and eventually plans to upgrade all 12 fans with their own FilClean™ skids as capital moneys become available.
The filter patches in figure 2 are direct results of the FilClean™ application. The patches are 25 ml of gear oil diluted with clean solvent and then drawn down through a 1.2-micron filter patch. The photos of the patches on the far right are magnified 100X under a photomicrograph.
If you have any questions or need help choosing the correct filter element for your application please contact us at sales@mscfiltertech.com