Joe, a rotating equipment engineer, was working at an oil refinery on the East Coast whose primary products produced are gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. He contacted us about a lubrication contamination problem that had recently developed in their hydrocracking process, and which had become an emergency. We received his call on a Friday and we had arranged to dispatch equipment by that Monday.
One of their 700-gallon lube oil reservoirs became contaminated with water. There was a seal leak and water was introduced into the reservoir and effects the viscosity and properties of the oil in a detrimental way.
The oil was cloudy so visually they could tell there were issues. To confirm their suspicion, they performed additional Karl Fisher and Crackle Tests, and determined an initial water contamination level of 5000 PPM, not taking into account any additional ingression..
Personally, I had previous experience/success with a previous customer on a similar reservoir, so that led me to recommend to them an emergency rental of a 20-GPM vacuum dehydrator, Class 1, Division 2, NEMA 7 (the one shown in the photo). They accepted my recommendation, so we started mobilizing the equipment even before we received a purchase order, given our trusted relationship with them from previous business. We had the equipment dispatched for rental and delivered the very next day and we offered any on-site support that was needed.
In order to confirm that the oil was clean, we finished off by reassessing a visual test, as well as the Crackle Test once more. Joe reported back to me saying that the results of the tests showed that the vacuum dehydrator worked very well, as intended. They decided to keep the dehydrator running “on-line” some more time, since water was still ingressing into the reservoir.
So do YOU have any questions or comments about renting oil purification equipment such as vacuum dehydrators?
Might your company have any lubrication or fuel contamination problems that we could help resolve?
Give us a call and ask to speak to me directly! or send us an RFQ and mention my name!
— Bill, Technical Sales
