Is it reasonable to expect a certain level of cleanliness from lubrication suppliers?

The chain of custody is complex and container tranfers are plentiful between the refinery and the customer. Each adds to the contamination load.

Is it best practice to have to filter new oil before using?

Terry O

Filter new oil?
If the oil comes from a sealed container and a well known supplier, it would be waste of time.

If the company you work for, has as common practice, buy cheap second hands goods with dubious contact persons, I would even open the pumps to look if there still exist bearings.

Dear Terrence,

Your expectation is not unreasonable as proper lubrication is a function of eliminating wear potential from mating surfaces. If the supplied lubricant contains wear items, then the product becomes self defeating. I know with Food Grade lubricants, filtration occurs just before filling of pails and drums. Containers are also new and qualified as clean prior to filling. Ultimately, transfer from bulk container to physical location of use is primarily where contamination occurs. Using a filter media transfer cart is recommended practice for gearbox filling and fluid transfer to critical equipment.
Your equipment is still your investment and the standards in which you employ are your only controllables. It is best to assume that nothing outside your control is absolute, and therefore you should implement filtration in areas where absolute micron levels are required.

Thanks for the advice Shaun.

svaniels:

The data I have seen shows that even "brand name" oil has contamination at some level that may be higher than is desired.

Do you actually know the cleanliness level of your new oils or are you "trusting" your "trusted" supplier?

BTW - did the drum get sealed at the refinery and shipped directly to your plant?

Terry O

Elaborating a little more, my first point was in the process Refinery --> User, which is very controlled.

Terence I am a very suspicious person. Nowadays we can get lub in small sealed containers. The stores people are a big fan of this (consigned warehouse at vendor). Obvious the lubeoil is delivered by Oil Tanker.


I believe that when the oil get in the hands of the end user, things are more likely to get wrong.

If there are lubrication issues, the first thing to do is observe the craft / working habbits / environment.

1) There are still troglodhytes that wash that nasty blue grease from the bearings in a bucket full of shellsol/varsol
2) People who take bearings out of their wrapping days before they mount it.
3) People transferring oil in a dirty environment (dust, clay, water, sand) using filters/containers that are never cleaned.
4) If there are lubrication problems, a look at the housekeeping around the equipment would reveal more clues than the complete MSDS of the lubricant in question.
5) People taking samples of a drum of oil with its opening facing the open sky, and wondering where the water came from.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: svanels,

Svaniels -

It took me a while to figure out that Troglohytes were not some primitive form of Tribologist!

I agree that end use and end users have an enormous potential for introducing contamination.

Think about the plants that have gone through the education/training and investment in technologies to ensure clean oil getting deliveries that are not as clean as one thinks.

Are cleanliness levels assured or even specified by suppliers?

BTW - grease in small containers - great! What is purchasing doesn't like the unit price?

Terry O

Terrence
When I was working for a large corp. we decided to bring our oil into ISO cleanliness levels. The first thing we found out is none of the oil (even in sealed 55 drums) was as clean as we wanted our used oil to be. We went to our vendors and they were happen to ship them at the desired levels. But after we got their quote for doing it we weren't very happy. We decided to set up an oil recieving depot. Oil was brought into that area then filter when moved into the oilers deliever vehicles or tanks. This required a lot of extra work but was a lot cheaper than having the oil supplier deliever it "clean". After awhile we found that we were still introducing dirty new oil into our clean used oil. We ended up adding another filter system between the oiler delievery tanks and the actual end use reservoir.

quote:

BTW - grease in small containers - great! What is purchasing doesn't like the unit price?

Normally they do like the price and the convenience. From a distributors point of view it is easier to sell 4 2-gallon flacons then one 200 ltr drum.

But on the other side if they give you only 2-gallon flacons to fill a 2 drum sump of a generator?

About the point of cleanliness, we have excavators that are working in marshland conditions (clay, water, swamp and mosquitos). Topping up hydraulic oil without ensuring cleanliness would mean resolve a breakdown in the middle of a swamp

We never had issues with lubricating oils of that nature, the margins are sufficient for our operations. In nearly all the cases of contamination we could relate it back to defects in the system.

• Breathers left out after re-assembling
  
• leaking seals
  
• someone leaving the screen out to resolve cavitation
  
• missing plugs
  
• internal wear of components
  
• filters that have worn out
  

quote:

Originally posted by svanels:
someone leaving the screen out to resolve cavitation

What that was a Maintenance Tip? Did you sent him/her a "Maintenance Tips hat" ?

I would rather put it on "Operation Tips"

I have seen people throttle the flow on a PD pump with a gate valve , or put watercooling on an electric motor.
Unfortunately a physical kick in the bu.. is not allowed

svanels
I suggest you pull a sample straight out of your new oil and have it checked. Breathers left out after re-assembling; leaking seals;
someone leaving the screen out to resolve cavitation;missing plugs; internal wear of components; filters that have worn out - these are all problems but they won't effect the oil still in the barrel.

Terrance
I have always beleived in the filter in and filter out method to insure your equipmnet is getting the best lube possible.I have also liked the idea of taking a sample from the bulk truck before offloading is done.Might sound drastic but no one is perfect and this goes for lube manufacturers as well.I don't think you can ever be too clean with regards to lube products.

Terrence,
You are right about ecpectation but it's a different story woth delivery. I have been asking major oil supplier to assure oil cleanliness but their reply it was: it's not possible. Try asking your supplier and good luck:-)

We get our papermachine oil in bulk (6000 gallons at a time) and we have asked it be filtered to 3 microns when loaded. They do that for us. Granted, the next problem is how clean is the tanker, but we usually get clean oil when delivered. Don't know if the volume we use helps influence their willingess or not.

Gary B

Gary -

Your point about the tanker is indeed valid. What good is 3 micron filtering if the truck has larger contaminants inside?

Is it better or advantageous to filter closer to the point of use?

Terry O

Alex - Imagine that - "Hey Mr. Supplier - you know that oil I ordered? Do you think it could acually be free of contaminants?"

Reply - "Sorry sir - that is simply not possible!"

Wow. There is some sort of disconnect here.

All the RCM and RCA and PMO in the world will not help reliability if we are using contaminated lubricants.

Terry O

quote:

Originally posted by Terrence O'Hanlon:
What good is 3 micron filtering if the truck has larger contaminants inside?

I get lost at some point; If the filter can trap (filter out) a 3 micron particle, then it can also trap a larger contaminant particle. the contaminants that could pass through would be those smaller than 3 microns.

Where the problem exist is the carrier may transport #6 bunker-C fuel oil just before loading with 3 micron filtered oil from another supplier. You have just contaminated an entire load of prestine oil with left-over sludge. We demand the carrier clean the tankers before loading, but that may or may not be happening. We try to watch for containation and often pull random samples for analysis. So far, what we get is in relatively good shape. We again filter the oil as it is pumped from the day storage tank to the machine reservoirs. Then after all the care to get clean oil to our machines, we then fill it with water and paper dust from the paper machines. Sometimes you can't win.

Have a good day,
Gary B

We once got a complaint about the quality of our diesel fuel loaded straight from the tank to the customer.
Their sample had: water, salt, a bit of clay and some very small snails.

The client was a fishing trawler..