Has anyone heard of or knows why phosphorous would drop out of a Fyrquel EHC fluid? One of our plants is having trouble with clogged filters on the EHC system. When we cut apart the 3 micron filter and looked at the material that was like a waxy sludge under the Scanning Electron microscope it came back as pure phosphorous. It is a PE oil so i would expect the high ppm counts for phosphorous that we got from a dissolved metals analysis. The moisture was 621 ppm which is higher than we would like. The TAN was 0.8 and a very low particle count. I was told it was not exposed to high temperatures but the fluid has changed to a darker color than new oil.
Any ideas on why it would drop out?

Are you using SelexSorb filter elements?

Chuckf

The TAN value is very high for this kind of fluid. High values of TAN, clogging filters, occurs some times when you are using Fuller Earth filter elements. You should have high values of Ca, Na, or Al in you spectrometric test.

The main point you should review is improve the Fuller Element Filters (there is a technology called Ionic Resins), improve the particulate filtration (improve the Beta Ratio).

If you take care at these points, you could improve the TAN (lower than 0.1), and avoid the cloggin filters, without changing the fluid.

You can see solutions for your problem in http://cleanoil.com/

Regards from Spain

Chuck,
What you are seeing on your filters is degraded phosphate ester. Your system may have high metal salt/metal soap. Adding air entrainment issues cause a formation of amorphorous sutt, discoloring your oil to black. There are solutions available. See link (cleanoil) provided by Ing. Cristian Schmid (posted below)
Best Regards,
Sean

Dear Chuck
Our experience is that sludge type deposits can come from 2 types of situations
1)dissolved metals (Ca, Mg) from Fuller's Earth and Na from Alumina or Selexsorb) reacting with other fluid components including phosphorous and contaminants to form pyrophosphates or pyrophosphites.
2)selexsorb being used on degraded fluid.

I would expect phosphorous levels to be reported at the max limit of the ICP, I would be interested in what the other metals were.

Please feel free to call me to discuss in more detail and I can email you some additional info that may be of value.

Peter Dufresne
403-246-3044 x11
pdufresne@cleanoil.com

Peter you were right about the Phosphorus levels being maxed out. Other levels were Sodium 360ppm, Magnesium 6ppm, calcium 9ppm, and potassium 68ppm.