I am in a Diesel Power Plant 120 MW having Eight WARTISALA 18V46 Engines. Due to some problem our lube oil becomes contaminated with water and water concentation inceases to 0.34 % analyzed by Dean & Stark Method. We are using Castrol TLX 554 lubricating oil with TBN 55. We had removed all the oil from the Engine sump and store it in the drums. Now my question is "

Can we use this oil for Top up/ Sweetening in our Engines ?"
Can we use it in our one Engine or all Engines?"

Other Parameters are as under:
Viscosity at 100 C : 14.69 c St
Viscosity at 40 C : 140.75 c St

Viscosity Index : 104
Water Contents % : 0.34
Fe : 16.55 ppm
Cr : 2ppm
Al : 11.5 ppm
Ni : 25.3 ppm
Cu : 1.5 ppm
T.B.N : 42.21 ppm

Can any one suggest some better option?

Yahya,

Having sold millions of litres of Castrol TLX series to Wartsila and other DG sets in India I have experienced such problems.

Wartsila's have an Alfa Laval centrifuge seperator for cleaning fuels like FO. A water wash is often adopted; and has, in many instances the cause of water contamination.

Coming to the lube, I am surprised at the use of TLX 554. In my days TLX 554 was used only for topping or sweetening. The practice was to run on TLX 304 or TLX 404 and only on complaints of rapid TBN depletion, resort to TLX 504 or 554.

In no circumstances can you use the water contaminated oil, more so as high TBN oil is in use, which would also indicate that fuel used has high sulphur. Use of water contaminated oil would result in severe rusting and corrosion.

Small quantity of water in oil can be dehydrated using vacuum dehydration. If water has not already emulsified in the barrels in storage you may like to centrifuge the same and conduct a "crackle test" to check for moisture. Pls also recheck with supplier and obtain a "go" "no-go" for the sample.

Should you require additional details you may contact hussam_adeni@yahoo.com.

Hussam Adeni

Yahya,

1. Check Total Acid No of contaminated oil.
General criterion to condemn oil is 50%
increase over baseline.

2. Water contamination wipes out dispersant
additives,could eventually forms soot
Agglomeration,abrasive wear.Check dispersant
characteristics of Contaminated oil.

3. If TAN and Dispercancy is out of limits,then
consider oil reclamation.

4. If TAN and Dispersancy is within limits,
suggest to apply vacuum dehydration.
If moisture level improves,oil can be reused.
Keep monitoring through oil analysis.

5. Identifying the root cause of water
contamination is the best maintenance
practice.

Regards

Bala.

YADHYA

Based on the Parameters as under:
Viscosity at 100 C : 14.69 c St
Viscosity at 40 C : 140.75 c St

Viscosity Index : 104
Water Contents % : 0.34
Fe : 16.55 ppm
Cr : 2ppm
Al : 11.5 ppm
Ni : 25.3 ppm
Cu : 1.5 ppm
T.B.N : 42.21 ppm

TBN is more than 50 % of the orginal value.

You could try to remove moisture by cenrtifuging it or passing over mositure absorbing cellose filter material which abosrb some mositure.

In case there is no alternates then try heating it indirectly with the help of immersion heaters and stirrers ( in order to avoid localised heating with a thermostat cutting it off at 60'C.

Hope this helps you .

By the way why are you wasting money by using a 55 TBN oil .

You can try Caltex DELO Marine 3400 SAE 40 with patented additive technology instead and still run it economically.

Yahya,
With this much water, the oil must have emulsified, centrifuges are unable to remove moisture in emulsified or dissolved form.Your oil is still OK,if moisture is removed. There is one Oil Purifier Klarol which removes solid particles upto 1 micron by absorption in cellulose and removes moisture by Thin film evaporation theory, it can remove water both in dissolved and emulsified forms.You can use this cleaning system mounted on a trolley to clean the oil kept in barrels at your place and after proper testing can use it without any fear, it is not advisable to throw huge quantity of such oil which can be recouped easily.
If you can give me your location I may suggest something concrete, however you may contact me at minimac@rediffmail.com

Yahya and all,

you are in right track, you identify the problem and now you are doing some research.
Bala allreay gave you good tips in oil quality determination. Once you idnetify if the capabilies still there is time to fight against water.
I strongly recomend you attack the water issue from two points of action:
1. Determine Root Cause analysis, guess is not an option. Once you determine the real cause, solve the problem and design a monitoring system to determine future water ingresion.
2. If the results from the lab for the used oil are ok (with the exeption of water of course) performa a vacuum dehydration, this will eliminate free, emulsified and disolved water. Some units will filter the oil in the same process.

quote:

to the lube

sales@lubes.in

You can use vacuum dehydration ( low temp not over 65 degrees) and give absolute vacuum to the oil , all water in the oil shall be removed. After that test the oil in a lab and discuss with Wartsila if this oil can be used for use , depending upon the state of oil one can recomend alternate use. We have a customer who recently took a unit form us for same issue.

If you are in India we can possibly help you with one barrel for your acedamic purpose (provided it is close to any of our installations) - you can email us.

Try looking at www.allenfiltersinc.com. The Hydroscav can remove 100% free and emulsified water and dissolved water down to 50 ppm or less.
We had good results in the Aramco/ExxonMobil refineries

Yahya,

Just one more suggestion - the elemental analysis did not include any of the additive packages such as Zn, Ca or Mg typically used in formulating diesel engine oils. I suggest you also get analysis on the water contaminated oil again for additives and talk to the oil supplier to see if the results obtained are typical of the product. This will also give some indication if water has affected the additive packages.