You may think that putting dirty oil into dirty equipment won’t make much of a difference in terms of performance. Think again! Tiny particles in your oil, hydraulic fluid, or other lubricants can absolutely impact efficiency and equipment life in many pieces of equipment. In fact, studies have shown that most unexpected equipment failure can be attributed to contaminated lubricants. Many components today are designed with extremely tight tolerances, and those are the ones that are most at risk. Now consider that contaminants are often invisible to the naked eye, and it should be clear that great care is necessary to protect your lubricants and equipment.
In order to combat contamination, the first key component is to ensure your staff is properly trained on how to prevent it. For example, storage containers should always be properly sealed. In addition, assuming you are using a desiccant breather to provide drying and filtration of airflow into and out of the tank, you should be checking the breather periodically to ensure it is replaced before it is spent. Hose nozzles should also be kept in a clean holder between uses. Finally, live by the mantra “if it’s on the container, it’s in the container”. Containers with dirt or fluid sitting on top of them will almost always end up with contamination inside.
Another consideration is your storage method and quantity. It is easier to keep one tank clean than several totes, drums and/or pails, and a bit of dirt in a 500 gallon tank is not as bad as the same dirt in a 5 gallon pail. In addition, a tank gives you a single point of focus for cleanliness, whereas several smaller containers will be more difficult to oversee. Consider going to a bulk tank to alleviate these issues.
If you already have good cleanliness practices in place and like the storage mediums you are currently using, there is yet another way to improve your fluid cleanliness. Using lubricants that meet your OEMs ISO cleanliness recommendation has been shown to improve component life, reliability and uptime. The problem is that most off the shelf products do not meet that level of cleanliness standard.
Chevron’s ISOCLEAN program allows Greg’s Petroleum to provide this standard of cleanliness which, as you now know, is very beneficial to your equipment. By running your lubricants through specialized filtering equipment before delivery, we are able to ensure excellent levels of cleanliness backed by this proven Chevron process. Contact us today to learn how this process can benefit your operation.