Oil Contamination: How to Reduce Lubrication and Maintenance Costs

Modern Lubrication Strategies for Industrial Reliability

With today’s increasing operating costs and environmental pressures, it is becoming imperative to change outmoded lubrication practices.

Fortunately, you can extend the working life of lubrication oils significantly (sometimes indefinitely), simply by implementing a preventative maintenance program with an oil filtration specialist.  In fact, oil is no different to any other part of machinery; if you service it regularly, it will last longer.  Maintaining your oil in a pristine condition directly benefits your machine life by drastically reducing component wear.

Oil contamination is one of the most common causes of accelerated lubricant degradation, component wear and unnecessary oil replacement. But contamination control is not simply a matter of installing a finer filter.

Effective lubrication management requires a complete approach: identify what is contaminating the oil, prevent contamination from entering, remove contamination that is already present, and verify that the lubricant and machine have returned to an acceptable condition.

Done properly, contamination control can reduce lubricant consumption, extend component life, reduce maintenance requirements and help prevent costly unplanned downtime.

Three Key Steps to Optimise Lubricant Life

To get the most out of your industrial fluids, take a systematic approach. Specifically, there are three critical steps to optimise oil life.

• Implement a routine oil analysis program
• Identify the specific type and source of contamination affecting your oil
• Eliminate or reduce contamination through improved site housekeeping and continual filtration of your oil to remove all types of wear debris and moisture.

Step 1: Implement an Oil Analysis Program

Your first step in lubrication management is to implement a quality oil analysis program.

For around $65 for an oil analysis kit and testing, this action lets you determine the exact types and severity of contamination affecting your machines.  Once aware of what is contaminating your oil from the report, you can then easily identify the source of the contamination and eliminate it, or at least reduce it to manageable levels. 

Use Data to Guide Your Maintenance Schedule

The test results of your oil sample analysis will clearly indicate whether the lubricant you are using remains suitable for the application. Naturally, to extend your oil life indefinitely, you must start with a high quality oil that is proven to withstand your specific operational environment.

As a result, you can completely forget about changing out your oil on a strict, pre-determined calendar schedule. Instead you simply take an oil sample at the appointed time.

The analysis report will then inform you whether the oil is suitable for continued use.  If the oil is found to be heavily contaminated, targeted filtration will be recommended. See our sample report here.

Step 2: Remove or Prevent Contamination

Once the condition of the lubricant has been established, the next step is to prevent new contamination from entering the system.

Why changing the oil doesn’t fix the problem. If contamination is entering a machine as fast as it’s removed, changing the oil treats the symptom, not the cause. The new oil simply becomes contaminated oil again, with dust, dirt, metal particles, or water, and the cycle repeats.

The more durable sequence is: identify the source, exclude it, clean the oil, verify the result, then monitor. A scheduled oil change on its own skips the first and last steps, which is why sites that change oil religiously on time can still see the same wear and contamination problems come back.

Contamination can enter a lubrication system through many points, including:

• oil storage and handling
• dirty transfer equipment
• open or poorly sealed reservoirs
• breathers and damaged seals
• maintenance activities and
• the use of contaminated top-up oil

Different contaminants need different removal mechanisms: particles call for filtration or centrifugal separation, water calls for vacuum dehydration, and sludge, oxidation products and varnish each need condition-specific treatment.

Effective exclusion starts before oil reaches the machine — clean, sealed storage, dedicated transfer equipment, and the right breathers and seals for the application

Oil analysis provides the evidence needed to identify recurring contamination, while good lubrication management prevents that contamination from continually returning.

The most effective contamination control strategy is to prevent contamination from entering in the first place, rather than repeatedly paying to remove it.

Step 3: Filter Your Oil as Required

Choosing the Right Oil Purification System

There are many things to consider when choosing an oil purification system to best suit your requirements.

If the primary goal is to reduce your overall lubrication and maintenance spend, the most economical style of filtration is an oil centrifuge/vacuum dehydration system.  The centrifuge has been an industry standard for decades because it is well proven, highly efficient, and requires absolutely no replacement filter elements. Instead of filter changes, a maintenance manager removes the contamination that collects in the bowl, re-assembles the unit, and continues using. 

Simultaneously, the vacuum function degasses the oil and removes all 3 forms of water contamination to the lowest levels achievable.

For continuous or offline oil cleaning, Clean Oil Services offers the Lubemaster range to remove contamination while the lubricant stays in service — including continuous cleaning on running turbine and gearbox systems via the Lubemaster OS600, without shutting equipment down.

Benefits of Centrifugal/Vacuum Dehydration Cleaning:

• Continuous Operation: They can operate on a dialysis basis while machinery remains fully operational
• Versatility: They clean diesel and all grades of oil from light hydraulic fluid to heavy gear oils, at full flow rates
• Precision: They efficiently remove wear particles down to sub-micron sizes
• Moisture Control: They target all types of water including free, emulsified & homogenised
• Superior Cleaning: They clean systems to much higher standards than a standard oil change
• Portability: The units are fully portable for on-site deployment

Oil Cleaning vs Oil Replacement

Replacing oil isn’t free; it carries the cost of new lubricant, labour, disposal, downtime, and often flushing. Cleaning contaminated oil can remove that cost while extending useful lubricant life, but it isn’t a universal substitute for replacement. Oil should be changed when its condition actually requires it — after chemical degradation, additive depletion, or contamination that can no longer be economically removed — not simply because contamination can be filtered out. The right call comes from what the oil analysis shows, as said above.

Find out what’s happening inside your lubricant before you change it — and see how to save on lubrication costs. Clean Oil Services can (for a low initial cost) assess oil condition, contamination and cleaning requirements to help you decide whether the right move is to analyse, clean, monitor or replace. Contact Clean Oil Services today to speak with our technical expert about optimising your fluid life and reducing your environmental impact.

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