Industrial Lubricants "Get Adapted to" the Times
Click:5896 Date:2016-02-17 10:38:00 Information Source:Internet
Industrial lubricants such as hydraulic oil, industrial gear oil, turbine oil and lubricating grease have undergone unremitting evolution and development to meet the requirements of different parties, like the application requirements from terminal users, performance requirements from equipment manufacturers and even requirements in the areas of health, safety and environment protection laws and regulations.
With the growth of demand for high-performance lubricants, while extending the service life and renewal cycle of lubricants, in some major applications, it also requires the lubricants to reduce the accidental shutdown time of key parts as much as possible. This means that chemical additives play an increasingly important role in the development of advanced lubricant technologies. The using environment of industrial lubricants is not optimistic because of the frequent extreme working conditions, existence of pollutants and a higher expectation for the output power and efficiency. To meet these requirements, constant improvement of additive technologies is needed.
When terminal users have higher requirements on the performance of lubrication, equipment manufacturers design the equipment with a higher efficiency, a smaller size and a bigger power, it will directly influence the size of oil tank--the amount of lubricant applied becomes smaller. With a smaller oil tank and a higher output power required by the original equipment manufacturers, this leads to a shorter service life of both oils and equipment, which goes against the demand and expectation of the market for a longer service life of lubricants and lubricating grease.
As a result, the toughest technological difficulty of industrial equipment design rests on the providers of lubricant technologies. This requires modern lubricant technologies to have the potential to extend the renewal cycle of lubricant, reduce the shutdown time and enhance the efficiency and provide a higher protection to the machinery and equipment.
Each area of machinery and equipment design is influenced extensively by environment and international laws and regulations gradually. The demand for a higher efficiency, a lower power consumption and a lower impact to the environment has contributed to a significant improvement of equipment design and manufacture in each branch of the industry.
Under the overall goal of constantly improving the performance of lubricants and lubricating grease, some regions require a reduction of reliance on petroleum base lubricants, which presents similar requirements and challenges for lubricants.
Hydraulic oil
The major requirement of terminal users of industrial hydraulic equipment is to cut the unexpected shutdown time which can cost a high price to the lowest and extend the service life of parts as much as possible. By extending the oxidation life, reducing the formation of sediments and utilizing reliable, endurable and wear resistant chemical substances, hydraulic oil technologies can extend the service life of equipment to the largest extent. Previous regulations and specifications of the industry can no longer meet the current using requirements. Manufacturers of hydraulic systems, parts and components set about formulating new regulations, which present a higher requirement on the wear resistance, thermal stability and compatibility of hydraulic oils.
Industrial gear oil
Industrial gear oil faces a variety of working conditions, which is an unprecedented challenge for formula of lubricants. Similar with hydraulic system, it has become increasingly common for industrial gear system to require a higher load with a small size and the terminal users also have a higher expectation for the service life of parts and components. This means that lubricants need to coexist with common pollutants such as water, dusts and solid pollutants for a longer time. The changes in metallurgy of gear design have raised a requirements on the resistance of gear oils to micro pitting. Micro pitting is the surface fatigue of gear sets, which will lead to damage of the gears.
New lubricant technologies can protect the current industrial gear applications to the largest extent and are also excellently compatible with parts such as sealing materials and paints.
Turbine oil
The design of power generation apparatus such as fuel turbine, steam turbine and combined cycle turbine is developing to be more efficient and reliable. Lubricant has become one of the key elements in today's turbine design. The cost of equipment shutdown time and parts replacement is extremely high. Quality turbine oils must boast a thermal stability and oxidation stability and can effectively guard against the invasion of pollutants, rusts and corrosion and the formation of hazardous paint film. Paint film will block the valve and finally lead to the occurrence of shutdown accidents.
The focus of turbine oil technologies is to enhance the efficiency and reliability of modern power generation apparatus to the largest extent, and develop additive technologies precisely geared to different performance requirements. The optimized anti-oxidation system and paint film controlling additive technologies have solved the performance problems in today's actual applications of turbine oils.
Lubricating grease
Like liquid lubricants, lubricating grease will also face similar hardware and environment challenges. One of the driving forces for development of lubricating grease market is technological improvement. For example, it requires that some tiny parts can work under a higher speed and load. Besides, it also needs more environment friendly and reliable lubricating grease technologies that can extend the maintenance interval and reduce the consumption of lubricating grease. That is to say, lubricating grease needs to further reduce wearing, enhance stability and solve the worries in the registration of toxicity and chemical products.
Lubricating grease produced with special additives have a further longer service life and are better adapted to the environment. To realize the higher goal posed by the constantly changing trend, we need selective agents to enhance the oxidation resistance of lubricating grease, thereby extending its service life. It's suggested to select agents that make the hazard level of finished grease lower and the impact to the environment smaller. Besides, in the area of environment protection, we also need to take into account important laws and regulations and reduce waste by extending the renewal cycle of grease.
Environment protection
The use of vegetable oil base lubricants has become increasingly common, but this type of lubricants itself is relatively poor in oxidation stability and low temperature performance. Today, vegetable oil base lubricants are being replaced by ester base lubricants which have a higher performance. The latter has a stronger resistance to oxidation and can rival mineral oil base lubricants in performance.
With the development of environment friendly lubricant technologies, the additive technologies used in various bio-degradable base oils are assessed and optimized. The environment friendly lubricant technologies can further enhance the energy efficiency of modern gear cases and hydraulic systems.
Though currently biology base lubricating grease only accounts for around 1% the global output of lubricating grease, people show growing interest in vegetable oil base lubricating grease, which is because of environment protection laws and regulations and renewability and bio-degradability of vegetable base lubricating grease.
