Case Study – Power Station Steam (Boiler) Feed Pump Lube Oil

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Case Study Power Station Steam (Boiler) Feed
Pump Lube Oil
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• BioKem recently completed a lubrication
  purification role at one of Australias large
  coal fired power stations. BioKem had previously
  assisted the Plant during a shutdown however
  this call was urgent due to a significant anomaly
  occurring in one of their Steam (Boiler) Feed
  Pump oil tanks.Lubricant Caltex Regal RO 32

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The Problem 

• In-house lube oil lab reports revealed an ISO
  4406 trend of 20/18/14 (NAS 9) over a 12 month
  period, peaking at 22/19/15 (NAS 11) when they
  flagged it. This is definitely out of spec for a
  Steam Feed Pump lube tank, even using a Group 1
  mineral oil.

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• A large quantity of sludge was removed from the
  on-board strainers. It was later determined that
  the on-board filtration and coalescer system was
  not working correctly and the filter housings
  also held a lot of sludge.

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• The site had already had a failure of a 28,000
  control valve system that was suspected to be
  from the contaminated oil and continued operation
  of the unit in this state, was a concern.

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The Challenge

• The main consideration from the Plant engineering
  team was to stay online and correct the
  contamination problem ASAP. A reasonable solution
  could have been to dump the oil and refresh the
  lube system with a fresh charge of 7,000 of oil.
  This would have involved the unit being offline
  so was not preferred! Also, filling with (new)
  unpolished oil, which is supplied nominally
  around 21/18/15 (NAS 10) was not going to help.

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• Considering the urgent nature of the project,
  BioKem mobilised on a Sunday, to be onsite 600
  am Monday morning, completing safety inductions
  and site requirements. We deployed a low profile
  140l/min Vacuum Dehydration Oil Purification
  System (VDOPS) suited for this constrained
  environment.

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• Tasked with correcting the SFPT lube oil ISO
  4406, and identifying the contaminants, BioKem
  established a mobile laboratory to patch test
  samples whilst onsite.An additional challenge
  was the tank ports, at 1 diameter, that were too
  small to flow the required 140 LPM of our
  purification rig which has 2 connections.

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• The BioKem VDOPS rig, with a flow capacity of 140
  LPM or 8,400l/hr, vacuum dehydration, 2 µm
  filtration, centrifuge and heating. The compact
  design and low profile of this rig allow us to
  stage it right next to the Boiler Feed Pump Tank.

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Purification Tasks

• For the 7,000l tank, circulating at 140 LPM, a
  complete cycle is every 50 minutes, we estimated
  up to three days of purification, operating
  24hrs, to correct the ISO 4406 from 22/19/15 (NAS
  11), to a healthy 16/14/12 (NAS 5).times the
  intelligent maintenance costs. It doesnt get
  much better than

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