Gentlemen,

I am looking for the possiblity and feasiblity of implementing online lube oil monitoring and analysis for hydro turbine and generator bearings.

I would appreciate if anyone can comment on this? Sensors can be used? available techniques or programs? Etc. thanks!

Tony

Are you looking for an "in-house" program or an on-line feature from a commercial lab? I am not sure of the implementation of an online program for in-house operations. I do know some commercial lab services that offer online reporting, and management. Let me know if you are interested.

Hello Tony,

food for thought.....

http://www.gastops.com/MetalSCAN.html?s=12

regards......

Thanks for the reply!

I am not looking for a online report. I would like to have a continuous lube oil monitoring system, collecting oil data all the time, or once for a while. All the data can be stored on a computer and we can trend it without having to collect data manually.

Does this exist in industry?

Dear Tony,

Portions of what you are looking for exist in the industry. There are inline particle counters that have been around for several years and are somewhat reliable. Water sensors work well but report dissolved water content as a percentage of relative saturation rather than ppm. Although this data may be very accurate, the conversion from %RS to ppm is not accurate due the changing saturation point of oils as they age. There are other sensors available or in development that will let you know when the oil has oxidized, when metallic chips are detected and a host of other properties. The information gathered from these sensors may be valuable, but you need to have a very good idea of the limitations of the sensors and exactly what the information is telling you. Most importantly, you should verify results with an oil laboratory before you make any important decisions on the data. (There are some exceptions to this - a gastops unit will alert a fighter jet if their engine is starting to fail. In this case, the pilot immediately lands the plane rather then worrying about sample verification from a lab!)

I believe that there is a tremendous opportunity in this market. Online sensors can provide immediate feedback on the condition of the lubricant system and the cost of wireless technology will enable a reliability engineer to monitor the equipment from anywhere. That being said, we are still years away from that vision becoming a reality.

Check out this excellent overview of technologies written by Sabrin Gebarin:
Online & Inline Wear Debris Detectors

Tony,

We have a system that can provide you realtime monitoring of particle count, temperature, humidity (% of saturation)and reservoir level.
We also can include preasure and flow if requested.

Send me an email and I will give you more details.
lvelasco@vsconsultores.com.ve