Varnish is without doubt one of the most widespread points in energy crops. It’s the exhausting, oil-insoluble natural residue that can not be simply faraway from mechanical elements. It sometimes happens in generators or compressors attributable to excessive temperatures, disrupting plant operations and inflicting downtime, which in the end results in income losses.
When varnish kinds on a important piece of kit at an influence plant, it creates a sequence response of points all through techniques. There’s the potential improve in labor, unplanned shutdowns, and prolonged lead time if substitute elements aren’t available, all of which translate to a spike in working prices. And since varnish silently builds up on equipment, it could actually go simply undetected, which may go away crops scrambling on the final minute in the event that they don’t have a prevention plan in place.
Crops can’t function at 100% of their capability, or produce all of their merchandise, after they need to shut down a turbine or compressor attributable to varnish. Programs that develop varnish sometimes don’t final as lengthy and require extra frequent oil substitute. Varnish can create excessive bearing temperatures, trigger servo values to stay, and create filter blockage. Crops need to shut down and change the bearings or clear them out, which isn’t at all times efficient. It’s necessary to mitigate the event of varnish and proactively forestall these points that inhibit a plant from functioning optimally.
Unplanned shutdowns can even have broader implications, like stopping a plant from assembly stakeholder expectations and monetary targets for the yr. Limiting downtime is due to this fact important for energy crops to optimize effectivity and obtain the largest price financial savings.
Discovering the Proper Resolution—On the Proper Time
In terms of optimizing plant effectivity, the proper merchandise—and the proper timeline—can have a big impression in mitigating varnish and varnish-related points. Oil-soluble cleaners are good choices for tackling varnish as a result of they are often safely added to in-service oil with out having an opposed impression on efficiency, not like water-based chemical cleaners or extra aggressive oil-soluble options. They dissolve varnish to forestall a sudden dump of contaminants from occurring.
Past having the most effective merchandise to rid a system of varnish, taking a proactive method permits crops to make sure they’ve clear oil earlier than injury is finished from superior varnish formation. The earlier varnish is detected, the higher probability a plant may have at price financial savings from changing gear or oil. If a plant has an outage scheduled one month out, a service supplier can implement an answer 30 days prematurely and use the answer within the previous oil to scrub it up after which put the brand new oil in. Or, if a plant’s subsequent outage isn’t scheduled for a yr, the service supplier can implement the answer a yr prematurely to maintain the system going and stop unplanned downtime. Planning these outages prematurely is integral to mitigating varnish and any points related to it.
Optimizing Plant Effectivity
One answer we use at ExxonMobil to deal with varnish is our Mobil Solvancer product, a high-performance, oil-soluble cleaner for gasoline or steam generators, compressors, and hydraulic techniques to enhance reliability and cut back the general price of operations.
The Mobil Solvancer product presents an economical technique to decontaminate lubricant oil techniques in between oil adjustments. The product works to deal with points associated to varnish resembling escalating bearing temperatures and keep away from points together with re-adhesion, switch of deposits, filter plugging, oil line stream blockage, and extra. It’s totally appropriate with in-service oil and may be added to rapidly dissolve varnish and deconstruct natural deposits from gear to assist preserve the cleanliness of turbine bearings, seals, and hydraulic techniques.
The Mobil Solvancer product helps oil conversions, alleviates operational points attributable to varnish, and helps with oil life extension. Along with bettering gear reliability, it doesn’t require a sacrificial flush, so there’s very restricted downtime and diminished prices in comparison with extra aggressive options.
Eliminating Varnish and Stopping Downtime
Clients sometimes attain out to our workforce of engineers after they suppose they’ve detected varnish. At that time, we have a look at bearing plots and bearing temperature will increase, run oil evaluation exams, and stroll via completely different situations to see which answer can be finest.
Our workforce was not too long ago approached by a plant in search of an answer to varnish that will permit them to keep away from a post-flush oil change in order that their gear may stay in operation all through the method. After operating a number of varnish prediction exams, we detected varnish buildup of their system and decided that the Mobil Solvancer product can be the most effective answer for his or her wants.
We efficiently removed the varnish and addressed different issues proactively in order that after they did shut down, they wouldn’t need to spend additional time on high-velocity oil flushes and rent contractors to scrub out the entire varnish within the techniques or probably change the bearings.
This technique led to financial savings and shorter downtime for the plant, permitting them to keep away from operating a sacrificial flush that will have in any other case been required with another answer. In consequence, the plant was in a position to come again on-line and resume manufacturing sooner than anticipated. They efficiently diminished downtime by three and a half days and, due to their capability to forgo the sacrificial flush, saved greater than 20,000 gallons of oil.
The easiest way to deal with varnish is to forestall it from forming. By being proactive moderately than reactive, energy crops can maximize the lifespan of significant gear to make sure service continuity, establish failures as they happen, cut back the necessity to change elements often, and in the end restrict downtime to forestall income losses.
—Joel Scarbrough ([email protected]) is a Lubrication Engineer with ExxonMobil Product Options Firm, a Division of ExxonMobil Company.
