I was recently inspecting a submitted turbine oil sample from a reservoir that had significant moisture and particulate contamination. But what really caught my eye was a bunch of amber colored fibers found throughout the sample taken from the bottom of the reservoir. On closer inspection, they were not really fibers, but long chains of what appeared to be little balls of oil. These long chains seemed attracted to each other, but did not clump in parallel arrangements. Rather, they formed angles of intersection along their length, comprising a bunch of triangular shapes. I believe what I am seeing are lubricant degradation products, perhaps generated by spark discharges or something else that forms these very uniform size balls. What causes them to join into triangles, I have no idea. Has anyone ever seen this. Oil is Mobil DTE 797.

Rich Wurzbach

A couple of years ago I witnessed a very expierenced lubrication engineer sampling off a hydraulic system. He put a new sample bottle on the pump and filled it up, he then emptied the sample and refilled the bottle. Thinking he was contaminating the bottle I asked him why he did this. The reply that came was not expected. He told me that even though this sample bottle was new and clean it was belived that the sample characteristics were different between the rinsed out bottle and the fresh un-rinsed bottle. After that I watched this person a few more times and relised he only ever did this on Hydraulic system oil. To this day I'm still not sure what actually changed but since that time I have witnessed one other person do this also on a Hydraulic system.

Do you know anything about this style of oil collection?

Hooch

Hooch,

On a hydraulic system, one of the most critical characteristics of the fluid, with regards to reliability, is cleanliness. The particle count can be influenced by particulate that resides even in a new, unused bottle. It is a good practice in sampling to rinse the new container to flush out any material that is in it, so that what is tested is more precisely representative of the equipment being tested. You might not see this attention to detail in other locations, because the cleanliness standards are not always as stringent, and it is less likely that the material in the bottle will significantly change the particle population in the analysis. But it would actually always be a good practice to rinse the bottle prior to sampling unless using certified Superclean or Ultraclean bottles.

Rich Wurzbach
MRG Power Labs

Here's some pictures of these "oil ball strings". Any thoughts?

mrg_labrequest_264_23_11-10-2008-1-46-20-PM.jpg (263 Kb, 25 downloads) Strings of balls, forming triangles