What kind of ISO cleanliness level does new oil show? I'm curious what you've seen with oils you get in the five gallon pails. I'm not in a postion to have our ISO 32 and 68 pails tested and our plant manager won't spend the $$$. The oil we use is an R&O from the a major mfg. Is one brand cleaner than the rest? Thanks for your inputs.

When we first got our in-house oil lab we were very surprised at how much contamination there was in new 5 gal pails of oil. With us it is usually aluminum filings or cloth like fibers. Our oil distributor could offer little help to solve the problem. 55 gal drums are usually much cleaner but…occasionally we filter new oil as we pump it in and it is not unusual for us to filter a reservoir or gearbox with new just put oil in it. But to answer your question, we get about ISO 22/21/18 on pails not counting the stuff on the bottom of the bucket.

Is it filtered from the delivery point? eg our oil isnt filtered leaving the source but it is filtered from the storage tank. I find that a lot of new oil is much cleaner if you kidney loop it although i cant give you any specs.I work in the desert so contamination is high and readily available. Kidney looping is the only way we can keep it under control. I know that new oil can never be relied apon as being consistent on delivery. Well not here anyway.

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

Penman, you can refer to here:
http://maintenanceforums.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/319103451/m/3301001732

New oil right out of the drum is not synonymous to clean oil, it is a good practice to filter out the oil or to use a filter cart in transfering oil from the container to the system. A dual filtration system will be suited for this application, one will remove the contaminants depending upon the efficiency and beta rating of the filter selected and the other will remove dissolved water.


Rolly Angeles