Practical Lubrication for Industrial Facilities

Book Preface

In 1988, I assisted a Texas-based power generating station in upgrading their lubricationmanagement. Trying to solve component degradation on pulverizer gears required drawing on the decade-long experience of Frank D. Myrick of Summit Oil Company in Tyler, Texas. Frank has since retired, but in the years he served as the president of Summit (now Klüber-Summit, and part of Klüber Lubrication, an international lubricant manufacturing company headquartered in Munich, Germany, with offices in Londonderry/New Hampshire, and Halifax/UK), he often agreed with me on the need for a readable, practical reference text on industrial lubrication.

If anything, this need has become even greater in the intervening decade. Space-age solutions and quick fixes are being pursued. The teaching and understanding of the “nonglamorous” basics is being neglected. Many industrial companies have replaced the job of the lubrication specialist with the multi-task function of the jack-of all-trades, or the contract employee who was hired on the basis of savings in hourly wages. Regrettably, the procurement of industrial lubricants is rarely scrutinized by a competent reliability professional. Moreover, the task is often tackled without a rigorous technical specification. We have even seen the buying process entrusted to purchasing agents whose only objective was lowest initial cost per gallon, and “as-soon-as-possible” scheduling.

Nevertheless, a handful of “Best-in-Class” industry performers do share a fundamental understanding of lube-related problems and procedures. They are the ones who often perform life cycle cost analyses and, based on the results, will find ample justification to selectively apply superior mineral or synthetic lubricants. They are the profitable, reliability-driven facilities that cherish and promote an understanding of the many interwoven facets of lubricant specification, selection, substitution, application, analysis, replacement, in-situ purification, consolidation, handling and storage.

Which brings me to the scope and purpose of this book. I set out to assemble practical and important lubrication and lubricant topics into a format that satisfies such principal requirements as technical relevance, readability, and applicability to the widely varying needs of modern industrial plants. I tapped into many available resources; these included Klüber Lubrication in Munich/Germany, Royal Purple in Humble/Texas and, especially, the Lube Marketing Department of my old employer, Exxon, in Houston/Texas. These folks know their business and are deserving of my sincere gratitude for allowing me to use so much of their outstanding, commercially available material.

The world’s best manufacturers and formulators of lubricants are constantly seeking to improve products to keep pace with the development of higher-speed machinery, or equipment that is run at over 100 percent of name plate capacity, or machines that are being subjected to temperature extremes, extended oil drain intervals, or just plain simple abuse. In short, even as we read these introductory pages, new lubricants are in the process of being developed which will go well beyond the capabilities of today’s already exceptional products.

Contents
Chapter 1 Principles of Lubrication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2 Lubricant Categories . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Chapter 3 Lubricant Testing. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Chapter 4 General Purpose R&O Oils . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Chapter 5 Hydraulic Fluids . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Chapter 6 Food Grade and “Environmentally Friendly” Lubricants . . . . . . . . . . 125
Chapter 7 Synthetic Lubricants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Chapter 8 Lubricants for Forest Product and Paper Machines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Chapter 9 Lubricating Greases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Chapter 10 Pastes, Waxes and Tribosystems. . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Chapter 11 Centralized and Oil Mist Lubrication Systems . . . . .. . . . . . . . 245
Chapter 12 Bearings and Other Machine Elements . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . 281
Chapter 13 Lubrication Strategies for Electric Motor Bearings. . . .
Chapter 14 Gear Lubrication . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Chapter 15 Compressors and Gas Engines . . . . .. . . . . . . . 395
Chapter 16 Steam and Gas Turbines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
Chapter 17 Lube Oil Contamination and On-stream Oil Purification. . . . . . . . . . . 463
Chapter 18 Storage Methods and Lubricant Handling . . . . . . . . . . . 483
Chapter 19 Successful Oil Analysis Practices in the Industrial Plant . . . . . . . . . . . 509
APPENDICES
Appendix A Lubrication Program—Work Process Manual . . . . . . . 543
Appendix B Tables, Charts, and Factors. . . . .  . . 556
Glossary of Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571