Local vacuum dehydrator outperforms foreign prodct

12th July 2013

By: David Oliveira

Creamer Media Staff Writer

  

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Filtration systems specialist Filter Focus recently rented its locally designed and manufactured vacuum dehydrator to Pietermaritzburg-based aluminium manufacturer Hulamin, after proving a competitor product to be inferior.

“Hulamin was recently in the market to either buy or rent a vacuum dehydrator and decided to buy a unit from a Denmark-based oil filter manufacturer because it was R120 000 cheaper. However, Hulamin did not compare the Danish unit spec for spec with Filter Focus’s unit,” COO Craig FitzGerald notes.

The company’s standard vacuum dehydrator is capable of dehydrating between 25 ℓ and 40 of hydrocarbon, depending on its viscosity, explains FitzGerald.

After the Danish unit had been used for three months at Hulamin, Filter Focus decided to run a one-week trial at the Pietermaritzburg facility using its own unit. FitzGerald says that the Filter Focus vacuum dehydrator was able to completely dehydrate the oil after only one week. The Danish unit did not achieve the same results in a three-month period.

He points out that Hulamin had the Danish unit in its factory basement and could only check the dehydrator in the morning because of the harmful gases released during dehydration in the day.

Employees at Hulamin found that the dehydrator had not been working when it was inspected every morning. “They were unable to determine whether the unit had tripped five minutes or five hours after the last inspection.

“The Filter Focus vacuum dehydrator requires no inspection or supervision, as it does not switch off on its own. The moment the bulk of the water has been removed, the unit needs to be manually switched over to the filter element for the final cleaning of the hydrocarbon,” explains FitzGerald.

He says the speed at which the Filter Focus vacuum dehydrator operates is not its only advantage. Although it uses filters for the final cleaning of hydrocarbon, the dehydrator can operate without consumables such as suction-line and pressure-line filters.

“Other dehydrators using suction-line and pressure-line filters need constant maintenance, and the replacement of filter consumables can take place up to three times a day, making them very labour intensive,” he says.

FitzGerald says this occurs because, once the dehydrator begins extracting water from oil, that water dramatically reduces the life of the filters, which then become blocked. “When the pressure-line filter becomes blocked, the hydrator experiences an increase in pressure and when the suction-line filter becomes blocked, there is a drop in pressure. “When the drop or the increase happens, the hydrator powers down, owing to an automatic fail-safe [device] on the unit,” he explains.

The only way to ensure that other dehydrators are running is to have either a 24-hour operator or to perform hourly inspections, says FitzGerald.

“It is a relatively new product, but we have sold units to platinum mining giant Anglo Platinum and iron-ore mining company Kumba Resources and have rented to Hulamin,” he says.

Filter Focus product engineer Drew Leibbrandt explains that wet or emulsified oil is drawn into the dehydrator system in a vacuum. The first chamber of the system is a quiet zone, which leads to thermostat-controlled heaters and onto a vacuum separator under negative pressure, low-humidity conditions.

“This provides the ideal environment in which to quickly and effectively evaporate dissolved water and gases. All vapours and gases enter the condensation unit and are released into the water receiver, after which cleaner, drier oil is passed back to the oil tank. Dependent on the volume of water contamination, multiple passes will be required to achieve target dehydration levels,” he says.

Numerous tests run by Filter Focus on the vacuum dehydra- tor have shown impressive results. Liebbrandt points out that, during an in-house test, during which a standalone tank of lubricating gear oil was purposely contaminated with water, independent oil analysis showed that the initial state of the oil had a water content of 47 000 parts per million (ppm), or 4.7%. A second sample was taken after eight hours of vacuum dehydration and showed an improvement in water contamination to only 124 ppm.

After placing a Filter Focus proprietary filtration system at the outlet of the vacuum dehydrator, results showed an improvement, with a further reduction to 39 ppm water content.

Liebbrandt confirms that, at a water content of 39 ppm, 0.0039% of water is in the oil, which is regarded as negligible, as this is drier than unused bulk oil supplies.

Water contamination occurs at almost every plant in every industry and the problems associated with this kind of contamination are vast, he highlights.

“Water contamination promotes oxidation, or rust, of the materials in a system and can lead to failures in components such as bearings and shaft journals, as well as in system mechanisms, such as pilot valves, trip cylinders and hydraulic pistons, which become sticky.

“Additives are contained in oil to improve certain properties, such as antifoaming, sludging and high-pressure applications. These additives can be washed out or removed by water contamination, causing the oil to underperform,” explains Leibbrandt.

Further, water also promotes emulsion and sludge formation, which block filters and can leave deposits on bearings, causing wear and, in some cases, failure. The Canadian National Research Council states that the life of rolling element bearings is reduced by up to 40 times with as little as 0.1% water contamination.

Water contamination also affects the lubrication quality of oils by restricting a protective oil layer from forming around the component materials. This causes metal-to-metal contact in moving parts, which promotes wear and possible component failure.

The vacuum dehydrator was fully developed in-house by Filter Focus in 2010 to provide a solution for what industry has termed “the scourge of the machine”. The dehydrator can rapidly remove all water, gases and acids from oil.

Edited by Tracy Hancock
Creamer Media Contributing Editor

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