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Welcome to the "Oil Insider"!
Our weekly newsletter is full of valuable tips & industry specific solutions within the construction, aggregate, sand & gravel, mining, and cement industries. Our business is centered on the petroleum industry and how to manage your business to be successful in dealing within this industry.
In this issue, get your machinery lubricants ready for the winter.
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Engines Ready for Winter?
In our previous issue, we spoke of coolant maintenance being the most neglected fluid in commercial diesel engines, or any liquid cooled engine for that matter. The problem lies in the confusion created amongst coolant suppliers, engine builders, and coolant distributors. Each coolant technology has different maintenance practices to maintain the integrity of the coolant. Almost all antifreeze on the market today uses ethylene glycol as the base fluid of it's chemistry, but there are different inhibitor packages associated with each technology. The inhibitor compatibility creates problems when commingled with different types of coolant. With conventional antifreeze or "precharged" antifreeze, there are 2 basic types of SCA (Supplemental Coolant Additive). Nitrite and phosphate based inhibitors. The problem is, to create an effective program, you need to know which chemistry your on to know what filters, SCA, and test strips to use. Consistency is the key to success. Then you need to understand what lab to use for analysis, as most engine company labs or coolant manufacturer labs will test only against the technology of the coolant they represent. They will often fail coolant results only because they don't match up to the inhibitor technology they represent or desire in their engines. This has led to much good coolant ending up in the hazardous waste tank. Use an "un-biased" coolant lab for your analysis, and find a coolant supplier that understands your requirements. The lowest priced supplier on coolant may cost you a lot more trying to go down the road...JG.
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What's the Best Hydraulic Oil?
So what is the best hydraulic oil for a mixed fleet operation? If you could only choose one, which would it be? You have UTF Universal Tractor Fluid, 10 weight engine oils, ATF, Hydraulic AW Fluids, and a few more in the mix. In the mobile equipment world, I fall back on CAT's perspective on hydraulic fluid. Machinery today is running at higher pressures, up to 7,000 psi, utilizing smaller pumps, higher speed, and smaller fluid reservoirs. These conditions place stress upon fluid cleanliness, antiwear additive protection, and issues in handling water contamination. Fluids designed to handle these conditions from a formulation vantage point are 10 weight engine oils and universal tractor fluid (UTF). With these formulations, you get high doses of antiwear, typically 1200-1400 ppm zinc to protect internal components and tight tolerances from wearing out. Also, these packages of a stout detergent package for keep clean performance. This high detergent/dispesant package offer water retention as well. When moisture enters the system, from environmental exposure to coolant contamination, the water is emulsified and held in suspension with the oil for a number of beneficial reasons:
- You can visually see water contamination in the site glass as it appears milky in color.
- Oil and water emulsified offers some lubricity protection for hydraulic systems. Free water offers no lubricity and will cause immediate component failure.
Concern must be used when selecting straight AW hydraulic fluid. These fluids are typically lower in zinc concentration, typically 300-450 ppm zinc, and they demulsify, or separate from water. The other concern is low temp pumpability. Hydraulic AW Fluids, unless formulated with pour point depressants, do not carry good low temperature performance. Some hydraulic fluids will not pump when ambient temperatures drop below 20 degrees F! The general rule of thumb is to stay 20 degrees higher than the pour point specification of a fluid. This also depends on where the pump is located. If the pump is positioned above the reservoir with negative head pressure, then additional care must be taken during startup to avoid pump cavitation. We recommend selecting a fluid where ambient temperatures do not drop below 30 degress above the pour point. |
