Filter cart?

[yucca]

I need to start researching for portable filter cart either a build or a purchase. My goal is to get the particle counts down on hundreds of gallons of 35.00 a gallon oil spread out in different sumps. Most of the sumps are 70-90 gallon range.

I have experience with a CAT built bypass filter cart with a previous employer. But it was time consuming. I want to clean up oil at a much faster more efficient rate.

Anyone have leads/experience with already made systems? Photos of custom made units? Ideas?

 

[icestationzebra]

I have some experience, built one and bought one.

What kind of oil?
AW, hydraulic, etc.?
Thickest viscosity?
Conventional or synthetic?
What is your particle count goal?
How much time do you want to spend actually filtering? To go faster you will need larger filters, which will be a problem if you start switching oil types.

ISZ

 

[sheepfoot]

We have a parker unit at work, we bought it from grainger several years ago. The unit has the two filters suction and return, 10 micron or better is what we try for. The filters can also be picked up there as well at differant spec's. We go thru some filters and they are not cheap even with the discount. It can be a slow filtering at times due to temp and weight of the oil like said already.

 

[yucca]

Thanks for the replies guys. The oil is a light weight hydraulic oil. Syndraulic 46.

Sheepfoot do you all use the Parker often? Is it a pain to keep clean and maintain? Have you used it with the correct filtration to remove moisture?

 

[sheepfoot]

Yes we use it often, did a cleanup on a trackhoe and backhoe in the last month, we have 6 types of filters plus some for water. We will reuse some fluids, mostly hyd nuto 46 and the aw 32/ some tch fluids. I had just done a cleanout on the unit tues, quick flush, drain, new filters. Takes less than 15 min to due a cleanout and it's ready to go again. I have been around several filter carts over the years with also some homemade units that would due 30 plus gpms. The moisture is a real pain with any of them, i have been on jobs where the owners will cut the top out of a 55 gallon drum and build a fire to heat the oil to get rid of the moisture in it, i think some on here have said the same with turkey cookers doing this. We have guide lines in place to waste or reuse lubes depending on type of failure, hrs on lube, less than 20 gallons.

 

[blitz138]

Yucca I may be able to help. In my past life I was a lube equipment distributor.....

Are you doing oil sampling? I think before you start doing any filtering you need to look at how clean or dirty your oil is now. Then you need to decide how clean you feel you need your oil to be, basically you need to know where you are and where you want to go before you decide how your going to get there.

Let me know if you need help, btw what part of NM are you from? I am there once in awhile.

 

[Randy88]

While on the subject of filter carts, when using them, how do you know when the filters are no longer working like they should, and bypassing them, without sending in samples of the cleaned product to determine just how clean it is? And how do you know when the filters are worn out or full and need replacing, is there a gauge or pressure setting you go by or exactly how do you determine it. In the last few years, I've had quite a few major equipment failures, right after an oil change, right now I've got a dozer that had a transmission bearing failure one week after a complete oil and filter change, now I should throw the oil away, but at 400 bucks worth of oil, I'd like to just clean it up and put it back in again, this is getting to really affect one's pocket book, with even a few failures a year, I could easily justify some sort of filter cart, and have the oil sampled before putting it back into the machine or how does everyone else do it?

Also with water filtering, how do you know when the filters are full and how do you know, when you have the water out, unless you'd send in a sample of the oil before putting it back in the machine? How do you clean the filters between weights and types of oil, say hydraulic oil and then the next time you filter 15w40 used as hydraulic oil, I've got a lot of machines that require that we use engine oil in the hydraulics, how do you eliminate cross contamination of the oils as they are filtered? I've only ever seen it done, never ran a filter cart myself.

 

[Nige]

Randy, when using a cart we have a particle counter and before filtering we sample the oil and determine the ISO Code. We then refer to a table that basically uses the oil capacity in the system, the current ISO Code, and the ISO Code we want to achieve to calculate a time that the cart needs to run. After that time we pull a sample and put it through the particle counter again.

Generally the filters on the carts I've worked with have a restriction gauge on them. This is an indicator of when the filters need changing.

We use specific carts for specific purposes. There is one cart designed for filtering hydraulic oils, one for powertrain oils up to say 30wt, then another for the heavier 50/60 powertrain oils, mainly because each one has different filtering requirements to get the oil to flow through it at an "acceptable" rate. Each filter cart really doesn't contain much oil inside it, I guess if you were really keen you could drain the oil out and have different sets of filters for different oil grades.

I'd repeat that from my experience unless you're using a particle counter to give you on-the-spot "cleanliness" results while using a filter cart you're blundering around in the dark.

 

[Randy88]

Nige, that's kinda what I was thinking, I do oil sample and am pretty religious about it, and with the dozens of different oils I use, I was thinking it would be either hit or miss with one size fits all kind of thinking on a cart or just doing certain oils, mainly hydraulic oils. I send in my samples for testing, there's no way I can justify the cost for the analyzing equipment on my size of operation unless somehow its far cheaper than I imagine it to be for a particle counter and such.

So if I get this right, lets say you have 200 gallons of hydraulic oil to clean through the cart, you know its x number of contaminates per ml or whatever and the book says to run the machine with a certain micron filter on it for 3 hours, you do that and then resample it to see its clean enough and if not, you know then its x amount lower of particles and need to rerun the cart another 1 hour and repeat till its clean enough to put back in the machine, is that about the jest of it?

 

[Nige]

You are correct. You take the total capacity of whatever tank you're going to be recirculating the oil from (this is not the full system capacity in many cases), look at the ISO Particle count of whatever's in it right now, take the Particle Count you want to get to, and the table will give you how many hours to run the filter cart. After maybe half that time you run a particle count again (the filter cart has a live sampling port on it) and if necessary adjust the time depending on actual results, then a final particle count when the process is completed. On a lot of systems like say truck differentials/final drives the thinking would be hook the filter cart up when the machine comes in for service, run it all the time during the service, and disconnect it just before the truck goes out again.

The oil never really gets drained from the tank/compartment, you suck it from the tank and return it back to the tank using a double (concentric) tube standpipe. In things like axles you suck from the diff plug and dump it back into the final drives.

The economics are pretty convincing if you have a fleet big enough to justify it. A quick and dirty calculation for our haul truck fleet showed that if we managed to increase rear axle oil life in hours by 50% over our current change period, 2 filter carts plus a portable particle counter would more than pay for themselves after on single go-round of a 32-truck fleet - that's not counting other equipment the filter carts would be used on. Also it takes no account of the life extension of components caused by reduced wear levels.

 

[yucca]

A portable particle counter is a must for what I plan on doing.

 

[Nige]

A portable particle counter is a must for what I plan on doing.

IMHO don't skimp on buying a cheap one, it's the most critical piece of equipment in a dialysis programme. Also make sure your filter cart has a live sampling point on it so that you can pull samples direct from the filtered oil going back to the tank.

if I was building my own filter cart I would ask myself if there would always be electrical power wherever the cart was going to be used and if there is I would put an electrically-drive gear pump on it rather than the more common air-operated diaphragm pump that most filter carts use. It would help cut down the pressure spikes in the line between the pump and the filter. Also the flow capacity of the filters needs to be about twice what the pump can produce to maximize the efficiency of the filters.

 

[FMD]

I need to start researching for portable filter cart either a build or a purchase. My goal is to get the particle counts down on hundreds of gallons of 35.00 a gallon oil spread out in different sumps. Most of the sumps are 70-90 gallon range.

I have experience with a CAT built bypass filter cart with a previous employer. But it was time consuming. I want to clean up oil at a much faster more efficient rate.

Anyone have leads/experience with already made systems? Photos of custom made units? Ideas?

A comprehensive and consistant oil sampling program is very important. You need to know what ISO-VG standards you need to meet. There are two oil analysis that we do. We do a partical count with the goal of >4microns. We also do a total acid number (TAN) on the break down of the oil. This is helpful on the additives that are still in the oil. A lot of shops oil sample just for the metal contents and use that as a base line to extend their oil drains. They forget to do the TAN base line to see where there additive package is on the extended drains. We made a cart up with 1 micron sock filters and have a restrictive gauge on it to tell us when the filters are impacted. We will kidney loop only once our machines (every 2000 hours + filter changes and then change the oil and filters the next 2000 hours) along with a oil sample on every kidney loop and oil drain. Keep in mind when you kidney loop, you want to excercise the machine so as to transfer the oils out of the machine boom, stick and final drives.

 

[timberyak]

filter cart

I have been using a filter cart for the past 5 years on six logging machines. We put quick connects on all the sumps, in and out. We filter to 3 micron(10 micron is not clean enough) and have a water removal filter.
Got the cart from Y2K (they are on web), they were very helpful in getting us started. But the best deal out there is to sign up for free issues of Lubrication Maintenance Magazine. Lots of great info there for free.

As for speed, warm up equipment oil first, it makes a big difference.

We filter all oil coming out of barrels and we take the cart to job sites and run it with a little generator.

We believe it's well worth it and hassle to have CLEAN oil