IMPORTANCE OF TRENDING ANTIOXIDANT INFORMATION FOR MODERN LUBRICANTS

With the modern generation of Industrial lubricants, Antioxidant Additives are the Life Insurance for the lubricant: guarantee a long life, and make sure that they protect the base-oil against accidents. By trending the individual antioxidants, RULER will increase the value of your lubricant life insurance.
It is not a stretch of imagination to conclude that antioxidants have increased significantly in value over the last 10 years, because of 3 major drivers:

• Economical driver - extend the life of lubricants and avoid unnecessary changes
• Ecological driver - use of high-performance and synthetic lubes
• Asset & Process optimization - equipment operate at higher load factors and consequently higher stress factors for the lubricant

Both Oil companies and Additive Manufacturers have reacted attentively to these technology drivers, by bringing high performance lubricants on the market of industrial lubricants, where the antioxidants are Additive #1 to protect these lubricants against aging and oxidative stresses.

FLUITEC offers you by means of the RULER instrument and RULER Data Management Software a users-friendly tool to start establishing:

• TRENDING curves of individual antioxidant monitoring
• TRENDING curves of Total Antioxidant Monitoring
• TRENDING curves for lubricants per equipment

Identifying a change in trend (quick antioxidant depletion) will automatically generate valuable information on accelerated oxidative stress such as from bearing overheating (Fig 1 compressor oil) or water ingression, and to avoid excessive or premature base-oil degradation as well sludge formation.

Fig. 1: Example of 2 compressor trending curves, with individual Antioxidant depletion.

ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS and ANTIOXIDANT MONITORING - an on-site combination to avoid future equipment failure

Revealing the root cause of the functional failure of a machine does include the antioxidant depletion and monitoring, as a direct result of accelerated oxidation.

The Machinery Lubrication article from Jim Fitch, "In Search of a Root Cause", describes very well the benefits and advantages of RCA, or Root Cause Analysis strategies, as part of Predictive Maintenance Strategies.

To be Proactive in your strategies, you can use a lot of the RULER test data information, as ANTIOXIDANT DEPLETION TRENDS are usually a consequence from the (root) cause:

• Fine wear metal particulates (< 1 µm) are very active oxidative accelerators (better known as catalyst effect) and will shorten significantly the oxidative life, even with the best, and high-performance lubricants
• Water contamination through fresh-oil top-up or external ingression (seal damage, low-quality air breather) is acting also as an oxidative accelerator

Before you start RCA strategies, make sure you establishing a condemning limit (in the case of the RULER , the RUL% for antioxidants). ASTM and DIN used oil procedures give you excellent guidelines for this.

Once you approach this condemning limit, you have to start combining other analytical tests, such as particle counting or water monitoring (see fig. 2 below on GT-oil)
Finally you take corrective Actions in order to increase again the RUL% (top-op of oil), replace filters, control incoming fresh oil quality, install high-quality air breathers

Fig. 2: Steam Turbine trending curve presenting data for RCA-case study.

Reference: Jim Fitch, " In Search of a Root Cause" - Machine Lubrication Magazine, Mar 06

RULER for Transformer Oils monitoring

Transformer oils used as dielectric fluid at power plants, are usually a highly-refined mineral oils that are stable at high temperatures and has excellent electrical insulating properties. This dielectric fluid functions are to insulate, suppress corona and arcing, and to serve as a coolant in oil-filled transformers, some types of high voltage capacitors, fluorescent lamp ballasts, and some types of high voltage switches and circuit breakers.

The fluids are mostly monitored through specified laboratory tests, and exists in 2 types of Transformer oils: non-inhibited and inhibited transformer oils. For inhibited transformer oils, which contain phenolic type (BHT) of antioxidants, the RULER will offer an easy-to-use procedure to monitor the oxidative health of these fluids.