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The overwhelming majority of process pumps in industry comply with the standards of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) or the American Petroleum Industry (API). However, neither of these two standard categories mandates any one particular type of lubrication. Grease lubrication, as well as lubrication by liquid oil or atomized oil (oil mist), or even pressurized pure oil are used in various process pumps. Generally, grease is chosen for ease of lube containment, but it is limited to relatively small ANSI pumps. The larger pumps and virtually all API-style pumps are oil-lubricated, but lube type selection and the designs that apply lube to bearings can vary. Lubricant types are categorized as either mineral oils or synthetic oils, and they certainly differ in cost. Also, lubricants need to remain relatively clean in service, and lube change intervals must be optimized. In short, important choices and decisions will need to be made. Therefore, guidance from reliability improvement and cost points of view will be necessary.
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Using a mineral oil would generally require oil to be changed every six to 12 months. With a clean, premium-grade synthetic lubricant, you would typically extend oil change intervals to at least 24 months. Incorporating the advanced bearing housing protector seals shown in Figures 3 and 4 and guarding against contaminant entry at breather vents could make 36month change intervals possible. ISO Grade 32 mineral oils are often considered too thin for pump bearings. They rarely qualify for long-term, risk-free use in pumps equipped with rolling-element bearings in typical ambient conditions. But Figure 1. Oil rings can have a tendency to simply switching to ISO Grade 68 mineral malfunction if they contact stationary oils will be risky for bearings that depend housing parts. on oil rings for lube application. Appropriately formulated with the right base stock and with proprietary additives, ISO VG 32 synthetics are quite acceptable from film strength and film thickness points of view. In fact, the performance of some ISO VG 32 synthetics duplicates that of ISO VG 68 mineral oils. These superior ISO VG 32 synthetics excel by simultaneously satisfying the requirements of sleeve and rolling-element bearings. Superior synthetics achieve high film strength through proprietary additives, so there can be significant differences in the performance of two lubricants of the same viscosity and base stocks. Only one might be suitable for the highest reliability services. The notion that one oil type or viscosity suits all applications is rarely correct. Similarly, no fixed or particular oil ring geometry is ideally suited for all oil types and viscosities. Customdesigned oil rings may be required to work with the thicker oils at certain high shaft peripheral velocities. Although synthetic lubricants cost more than mineral oils at the point of initial purchase, rigorous and all-encompassing cost justifications will often show relatively short payback periods. Combining extended bearing life and extended drain intervals results in better payback. This is made possible by keeping contaminants away from the lubricant. Therefore, upgrading to the best-available bearing protector seals and implementing plant-wide oil-mist lubrication are two principal strategies adopted by world-class plants.
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synthetic lubricants create an environment conducive to long bearing life. Common sense and statistical evidence point to greatly reduced downtime risk and demonstrable maintenance cost avoidance credits. Because synthetic lubricants are more expensive than mineral oils, some users cling to mineral oils for their process pumps. They also may employ inadequate bearing housing seals because their only concern is the initial purchase price. Wear-prone seals include lip seals and also certain rotating labyrinth seals. Seals to avoid are those that allow a rotating O-ring to contact the sharp edges of an O-ring groove, or O-ring grooves that are wide enough to prevent such contact but that enable copious amounts of contaminants to enter the bearing housing. While even small machine manufacturers recognize the need to limit both contaminant ingress and oil leakage, inexpensive lip seals are found in some pumps and drivers to keep initial cost low. Yet lip seals typically last only about 2,000 operating hours (three months). When lip seals are too tight, they cause shaft wear and in some cases lubricant discoloration known as black oil. Once lip seals have worn and no longer seal tightly, oil is lost through leakage, or contaminants find their way into bearing housings. This fact is recognized by the API-610 standard for process pumps, which disallows lip seals and calls for either rotating labyrinth-style or contacting face bearing housing protector seals. Small steam turbines often suffer from steam leakage at both drive and governor-end sealing glands. Each bearing housing is located adjacent to one of these two glands, which contain carbon rings. As soon as the internally split carbon rings start to wear, high-pressure and highvelocity leakage steam finds its way into the bearing housings. Traditional labyrinth seals have proven ineffective in many such cases, and only solidly engineered bearing protector seals are effective in blocking leakage steam intrusion.
Figure 2. This cross-section view shows a small steam turbine driver for process pumps. (Ref. Worthington-Turbodyne) The bearing housing protector seal in Figure 3 was designed for steam turbines. It incorporates a small- and large-diameter dynamic O-ring. This bearing protector seal is highly stable and not likely
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to wobble on the shaft; it is also field-repairable. With sufficient shaft rotational speed, one of the rotating (dynamic) O-rings is flung outward and away from the larger O-ring. The larger crosssection O-ring is then free to move axially, and a micro-gap opens up. When the turbine is stopped, the outer of the two dynamic O-rings will move back to its standstill position. At standstill, the outer O-ring contracts and touches the larger cross-section O-ring. In this design, the larger cross-section O-ring touches a relatively large contoured area. Because contact pressure equals force divided by area, a good design aims for low pressure. In outdated configurations, contact with the sharp edges of an O-ring groove risks O-ring damage, and slivers of O-ring material can end up contaminating the lube oil.
Figure 3. This cross-sectioned half-view illustrates an advanced bearing housing protector seal for small steam turbines. (Ref. AESSEAL Inc.)
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eliminate much of the human element and are less maintenance-intensive than traditional pumps and drivers lubricated with vulnerable oil rings and constant-level lubricators.
Figure 4. A conventional lip seal (top) versus a modern rotating labyrinth bearing housing protector seal (bottom). (Ref. AESSEAL Inc.)
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Figure 5. This chart shows how changes in lube application, oil type and lube viscosity tend to affect percentage reductions in bearing friction. (Ref. E. Villavicencio) Oil mist is an atomized amount of oil carried or suspended in a volume of pressurized dry air. The oil mist - actually a ratio of one volume of oil suspended or carried in 200,000 volumes of clean, dry air - moves in a piping system. The point of origin is usually a simple mixing valve (the oil-mist generator) connected to a header pipe. Branch lines often feed hundreds of rolling elements in pumps and drivers connected to the header. At standstill, or while on standby, pump and driver bearings are preserved by the surrounding oil mist, which exists in the bearing housing space at a pressure just barely higher than ambient. These pump and driver bearings are lubricated from the time when atomized oil globules join to become larger oil droplets. This combining begins whenever the equipment shafts rotate, which is when small globules get to contact each other and start coating the bearing elements. There are also plant-wide oil-distribution systems whereby liquid oil (not an oil/air mixture) is pressurized and injected through spray nozzles into the pump bearings. These oil-spray systems are not to be confused with the more economical oil-mist systems. However, both oil-mist and oilspray applications can take credit for lower
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Figure 6. This chart illustrates how changes in lube application, oil type and lube viscosity affect bearing temperature.(Ref. E. Villavicencio)
frictional losses (see Figures 5 and 6) and should be taken into account when doing costjustification analyses.
Synthetic Lubricants
Using High-Film-Strength
Good lubrication practices include choosing the right oil, taking proper care of it and changing it before bearings are harmed. Improvements in lubricant quality can only be achieved by utilizing oils with superior lubricating properties. These would be premium synthetics. Yet even among prominent synthetic lubricants, oil performance can vary greatly based on the amount and composition of additives in the oil. For process pump bearing lubrication, at least one company combines synthetic base oils including polyalphaolefin (PAO) and dibasic ester base stocks with advanced additive chemistry to realize greater film strength. Numerous incidents have been documented where advanced lubrication technology has significantly improved pump reliability. In the majority of cases, advanced lube technology with its often more favorable (lower) coefficient of friction results in reduced bearing operating temperatures. Micro-cracks in bearing surfaces can cause increased noise and vibration. Suitable high-filmstrength oils will fill these micro-cracks. This then lowers noise intensity and reduces vibration severity. High-film-strength lubricants also lessen the probability of lube oil darkening during the running-in period of bearings with brass or bronze cages. There have been reported instances of high frictional contact during the initial run-in period of the copper-containing material recommended by API-610. If the net axial thrust action on one of the two back-to-back oriented bearings causes it to become unloaded, it may skid. The risk of lube oils darkening during the run-in period of such pumps is reduced through the use of high-film-strength synthetic lubes. To be fair, this risk could also be reduced by insisting on impeccable installation techniques and the selection of bearings with cages made of advanced high-performance polymers. The API-610 stipulation of using thrust bearings with particular load angles and brass cages represents a compromise, which is especially attractive for plants that place the desire to standardize ahead of failure-avoidance concerns. Whatever the differential cost of a quart of high-film-strength synthetic, it is insignificant compared to the value of an avoided failure incident on critical, non-spared refinery pumps. Therefore, critically important pumps, pumps in high-temperature service and pumps that have failed more often than others in the plants pump population should be lubricated with high-filmstrength synthetic oils. Their higher cost is easily justified by four to six times conventional oil replacement (draining) intervals and by keeping the oil free from contamination. Oil contamination is effectively avoided by installing advanced bearing protector seals. On pumps where a problem is in progress, changing to a superior synthetic is highly recommended. If access to the sump drain is safe when the pump is in service, the present oil can be drained while such pumps are on-line and running. Many superior synthetics are compatible with the oil presently used in a particular pump. Still, compatibility must be verified.
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Of course, there are certain pump bearing or lube degradation problems that have nothing to do with the lubricant type. In those instances, nothing will be gained by changing over to better oils.
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