Gearbox purging

Hi EA, Usually the nitrogen would be used on intrinsically safe gas sites, the nitrogen will remove water but dry better for just water as no corrosion biproducts, how quick does the vis decrease on the oil mist purge drives??
Thanks Rob S

It drops about 10-15 cSt per month. I work at Kraton Polymers in Belpre,Ohio which is a chemical plant. We use oil mist as a purge to keep moisture out of the gearboxes. So you would not recommend nitrogen as a purge to keep water out? Thanks for your response.

Hi EA,

if you are using Oil Mist, that mean you are already having Dry Air source. (i.e: Instrument Air).
Instead of Nitrogen, why you're not trying to use Filtered Dry Air?

Regards

OK. Thanks for your help. Nitrogen is more accessible than the instrument air.

Hi EA,
apologies for the late reply, I've been away from computers for 2 weeks,
The applications we monitor using nitrogen purge on the gas sites have large 100-150 mm diameter breather vent pipes and over 10 years or so we have not seen any significant dirt ingress that we would recommend an oil change off.
The pros have been brought to attention in this discussion,
The cons are Nitrogen and water can under the correct circumstances form nitric acid with the onsite engineers asking us to monitor for corrosion bi-products with nothing significant found in the reservoir bottom samples although the steel pipe venting the nitrogen does show a brown corrosion type layer that is not defoliating any oxide particles, I don't have data on the flow rate of nitrogen used but that data would be related to running an intrinsically safe machine on a gas site.
Regards
Rob S