COMPRESSOR CLEANING: Lube/hydraulic oil cleaning technique brings savings
Europafilter’s cleaning systems for hydraulic and lubricating oils have had a very positive impact at Statoil’s Kollsnes gas terminal, dramatically reducing the cost of oil changes and improving the mechanical and environmental performance of the compressors they serve.
Europafilter’s cleaning equipment brought significant operational improvements when applied to compressor lube oil at the Kollsnes gas terminal (Photo: Dag Magne Søyland).
Instead of changing lubricating oil at an annual cost of NOK 150,000 per compressor, the company pays NOK 17,000 a year for new filters, a saving of NOK 133,000 per compressor, Statoil reported in its house journal. It also supported Europafilter’s claim that passage through the filter left the oil considerably cleaner than when it was new. This meant that its useful life has been extended to an estimated 20 years, compared with just two to three before the filters were brought into use. Wear and tear on the compressor components was also reduced, leading to better production regularity and reduced emissions, Statoil said.
Europafilter’s EF2000 filter series uses a patented method based on a capillary technique. The filter element is made of cellulose paper tightly wound round a tubular core. The oil passes axially - downwards - through the so-called capillary tubes. In the process the paper adsorbs particles of dirt and absorbs water, says sales and marketing director Niclas Davin.
The problem in dirty oil is the small particles of less than one micron, not least because they create the conditions for oxidation of the oil. But the filter has an almost unequalled efficiency of removal, being capable of trapping particles as small as 0.1 micron. As measured by the National Aerospace Standard (NAS 1638) on a scale from 00 to 12, in which NAS 00 is the cleanest, new oil typically with a purity of NAS 8 can be cleaned to NAS 4 or better by one passage through the Europafilter system.
Normally the filter is installed as a bypass or side-flow filter, which is fed by a branch pipe from the lube oil reservoir. The aim is to pass all the oil through the filter once every three days, Davin says.
Statoil first tested the filter on deck cranes and an elevator which had hydraulic problems on the Gullfaks C platform. The results were so impressive that now some 150 Europafilter filters are installed on the platform. More recently more than 60 filters have been installed on the Kristin platform.
For more information contact Niclas Davin, Europafilter. Tel +46 31 709 0210, fax +46 31 497 550.[email protected], www.europafilter.se
