About 15 years ago, I added a new file to my library of technical literature – a folder into which I put a single magazine article on flushing procedures. Today the file is bulging with papers, articles, procedures and industrial standards on this single subject.

When you consider the large number of machine types in use, each with special needs and the unique problems that flushing must restore to a clean and healthy state, it is no wonder that so many different approaches and technologies have been deployed.

Both service and equipment suppliers continue to offer new answers to the age-old problem of how best to purge contaminants and lubricant degradation products from the bowels of the machine.

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This is the fourth and final part in my series on flushing. We’ve already talked about when to flush, the consequences of not flushing, the differences between flushing and oil reclamation, flushing tactics, flushing strategies and flushing sequence.

This article addresses the role of the voice within your oil and how to let it guide your flushing process. This voice, also known by practitioners as an oil analysis, can provide essential information relating to flush avoidance, when to flush, how to flush, and when your flush has been successfully executed. This guiding role of oil analysis will be discussed in three phases.

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This is Part Three of a four-part series on flushing. Part One (May-June issue of Machinery Lubrication) addressed the topic of when to perform a flush and the possible consequences of delaying the procedure. Part Two (July-August ML) covered the maze of flushing tactics and discussed the similarities and differences between flushing and oil reconditioning.

Part Three establishes a rationale to select the best tactics for the specific machine and conditions requiring flushing. The final part of the series will assemble them into a program of steps needed to achieve a complete and successful flush. If you haven’t already read the first two parts, I suggest you review them before proceeding with the strategies outlined below.

It stands to reason that selecting the wrong flushing tactic and strategy can be not only costly and time-consuming but potentially ineffective. Carelessly opening a machine and introducing foreign fluids may also present risk to the machine’s future reliability – more harm can be done than good.

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What should you do when a lubricant doesn’t get a clean bill of health?

More specifically, what must be done with the machine that contained a degraded or contaminated lubricant after the oil drain? Is a flush required?

If the answer is yes, there are a few other questions that follow, such as:

• What was the root cause that led to a need to flush? Who is to blame?
• How urgent is the need to flush? Can’t we wait?
• What are the risks of not flushing? What is the worst that can happen?
• Are there negative side effects to performing a flush? What dark cloud is hidden beneath the silver lining?
• What is the best way to perform the flush to reduce cost, risks and business interruption?

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It takes only a small amount of water (less than 500 ppm) to substantially shorten the service life of rolling element bearings. There is a vast amount of research that supports this. Being a career-long crusader of clean and dry oil, I will certainly not argue the contrary. In fact, water’s destructive effects on bearings can easily reach or exceed that of particle contamination, depending on the conditions.

My theme for this column, therefore, is not about whether water imparts harm but rather how it does. Knowing how water attacks and causes damage helps in setting important dryness targets and also aids failure investigations post mortem. Further, when water contamination is unavoidable, understanding these water-induced failure modes can be valuable in the optimum selection of lubricants, bearings and seals for defensive purposes.

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If you thought oil analysis was only about monitoring oil properties, you’re in for a big surprise. It’s a fundamental premise that we don’t analyze the oil merely to generate data, but rather we are surveying for answers to machine reliability questions. Many of the answers are imbedded in the body of in-service lubricants, but many others are found in remnants of degraded lubricant and sloughed-off debris. These discarded impurities can be far more revealing to machine reliability than what remains oil-borne.

Too often I’ve seen lab data show an oil to be relatively clean when, at the same time, filters were plugging prematurely and there was heavy tank bottom sediment. For the most part, low-viscosity industrial lubricants like turbine oils have limited impurity-holding capacity. This simply means that these fluids are quick to release solid and liquid impurities to machine surfaces, filters, separators and system quiescence zones.

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Lubricating oil is the lifeblood of virtually all rotating equipment found in a power plant. Keep it clean and the lube system is relatively low-maintenance. However, cycling operation and restarts after a temporary or long-term shutdown can create a whole new class of what may be unfamiliar problems. The fundamental question is determining when a lube oil flush is justified, and answering that question requires understanding the conditions that trigger the need for a flush. A good place to start is to consider the most common reasons a flush is required (see table). Often, the need to flush is first observed during an inspection, by the appearance of sludge in a sight glass, on a used filter, or at the bottom of a sump. This can be confirmed by oil analysis and further inspection. Remediation entails both the removal of the sludge, varnishing, or debris as well as removal of the root cause before the system can be returned to service.

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