Contaminated lubricants can affect an entire machinery system, resulting in downtime, equipment repairs, or replacement, leading to increased costs.  

Lubrication Engineers (LE) South Africa recommends a ‘kidney-loop’ filtration cart to drain contaminated lubricants from systems, helping to prevent further damage. 

LE national marketing manager Gavin Ford says the filtration cart is often the first step in helping clients solve lubrication contamination problems.

“We’ll get complaints of machinery issues like loud operating volumes, high temperatures, or excessive vibrations. From experience, we know that most of these issues are linked to contaminated lubricants. About 80% of the time, the oil needs to be cleaned, rather than replaced, so we run the kidney-loop system to do this,” explains Ford.

The solution mechanically separates particles or water from the system to decontaminate the lubricant. Contaminants can be introduced into a system for various reasons, for example if a breather is not installed with a new part, such as a pump or motor, or water ingress during cleaning procedures.

Ford notes that finding the underlying cause of lubricant contamination is an important part of the process. Once the lubricant is filtered, the problem is diagnosed and fixed, after which further analysis is conducted to ensure that the system is running efficiently and effectively.

In addition to decontamination, filtration carts can be used in a variety of applications, such as dispensing or pre-filtering new oil, evacuating used oil, flushing new or repaired systems, collecting samples for oil analysis and topping off reservoirs.

The LE filter cart is designed for filtering mineral-based industrial oils and most synthetic oils with a maximum operating viscosity range of ISO 680 at 38 °C (3 000 ssu / 648 cSt) within ambient temperature ranges of -26 °C to 66 °C. Various sizes of filters are available, from 3 microns for hydraulic systems to 20 microns for engines or gearboxes, to ensure that beneficial additives in the lubricants are not filtered out of the system.