Exploration Rigs insist on Oil Analysis 

For many years, rig operators have used oil analysis as an essential tool for routine maintenance and future cost avoidance. On oil rigs, equipment failures risk employee safety, and missed production targets are realized very quickly. The remote locations of offshore rigs make routine maintenance very expensive. In most cases, skilled people and supplies can only reach the platform by ship or helicopter so the cost of bringing technical specialists, replacement equipment, spare parts and tools to the platform is high.

Practical Steps to Increase Your Site’s Ability to Detect
and Manage Abnormal Lubrication Events

There is a lot of discussion about artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT) and how these can be applied in all areas of reliability programs, particularly oil analysis. In this technology, many users struggle to understand and trust how alarms are set, maintained, and adapted to meet the changing conditions with lubricated mechanical equipment. All of these intelligence initiatives are ineffective if the data is not trustworthy.

The Dakar Rally 2021 finishes up in Saudi Arabia, and the event is known for how tough it is on race vehicles and support teams. We learned a lot about how the Minilab 123 EL solution is used by Motul for on-site oil analysis, with the SpectrOil oil analyzer, in their mobile lab during the 2018 Dakar rally.  See Motul’s 2018 article below to learn how testing the oil of an engine is like analyzing someone’s blood.  That’s an impressive support truck and mobile lab!

How can on-site oil analysis benefit municipal fleets? Our expert, Dan Walsh, illustrates how on-site oil analysis programs can positively impact municipal fleets.

Point of care oil analysis is now established and accelerating as companies find reliability improvements and cost savings.

In a recent reliability survey, between 60 to 70% of industrial facilities employ oil analysis as an important component of their reliability programs. Oil analysis gives a snapshot of machinery health, preventing unnecessary oil changes and predicting equipment failures before they happen. Most organizations draw oil analysis samples and ship them off-site to be analyzed in a laboratory. The results are sent back anywhere from days to weeks depending on location and industry.

Point of care oil analysis (today’s on-site oil analysis) has grown rapidly in the last three years as leading companies in power generation, mining, food production and industrial manufacturing invest in tools and software solutions to insource at each production site. Benefits experienced by these early leaders indicates that this trend will accelerate more now, despite current challenges. Here are 5 reasons why organizations across the world are investing in point of care solutions:

Monitoring turbines with oil analysis is well known and well established. All turbines, both steam and gas, have a large oil reservoir to lubricate the turbine bearings. Older designs had separate sumps for the hydraulic control of valves, whereas newer designs may have the lube oil and hydraulic sump linked together. Power plant operators new to oil analysis can be easily confused about what all the tests are. Fortunately, the industry has developed umbrella specifications for power plant lubrication monitoring, such as ASTM D4378 and ASTM D6224, and these define almost every test used to qualify lubricants for new and in-service monitoring for power plants.  

Oil analysis was first employed on engines as a predictive maintenance tool, and it remains a predominant technique for insuring the reliability of engine systems. Reciprocating internal combustion engines power most of the world's mobile equipment, such as cars, trucks, buses, locomotives, mining equipment, agricultural equipment and are also common in stationary backup power generators, oil and gas exploration rigs, and pipeline compression stations.  

Oil analysis is a very useful tool for gear systems. Geared systems are found across both mobile and industrial equipment. Though they are designed to be very reliable, they cause a lot of disruption and costs when they wear or break due to poor operation or contamination. Oil analysis is a great tool to detect when failure conditions are developing, and as such most gear manufacturers suggest condition monitoring, including oil analysis.

Compressor oils can create unique challenges when trying to measure viscosity. Dissolved gases from refrigerants, in particular, tend to bubble out when these oils are measured using traditional viscometers. This can create errors in the measurement, typically causing readings to be much lower than they should be. 

Particle counting is a critical aspect of any machine conditioning program and
there are many tools out there available to monitor and track the quantity and
severity of the contamination, be it due to external contamination or machine
wear.