7 Benefits Of Regular On-Site Oil Analysis

It’s highly important to perform regular onsite oil analysis. You need to perform petroleum fuel analysis to monitor the quality of the petroleum being supplied to your plant machinery. Fuel quality affects the performance of your plant machinery and equipment in numerous ways.

Fuel performance will have an impact on the components of your machinery. It’ll also have an impact on the frequency of your need for maintenance downtime and repairs. Such scenarios make it important to conduct petroleum inspection and oil analysis regularly. Here are some of its benefits: 

1. Oil Analysis Can Identify Qualities Of Your Fuel Supply

One of the primary benefits of performing regular on-site petroleum testing and oil analysis is that it’d enable you to identify the characteristics and performance quality of your fuel supply. Petroleum fuel is like the lifeblood that powers your plant machinery and equipment. It’ll also leave an impact on your machines because it comes into contact with some of the vital internal components of your machine’s engines and gears.

Oil analysis will give you more nuanced and thorough insights into how the petroleum supplied to your plant machinery affects their power and performance. By doing regular tests and analysis of your fuel supply, you’ll be able to identify the specific performance capacity and power output that can be produced by your petroleum fuel supply. 

2. Oil Analysis Can Be Used To Maximize Power Output

Another important benefit from regular onsite oil analysis is that it’ll help the planning and operations staff adjust the plant machinery and equipment to maximize the power output from the petroleum fuel supply. By performing fuel analysis, you’d be able to identify traces of contaminants or impurities in your petroleum fuel supply, like water, bacteria, and inorganic debris.

Impurities and contaminants can have an impact on the performance of petroleum fuel. For one, they can prevent your fuel from burning at a high level of efficiency. This will degrade the capacity of your machinery to produce maximum power output.

Low levels of power output will, in turn, bring down the productivity of your production and business operations. To produce more power, it’d require higher fuel consumption, ultimately pushing operational costs higher and taking away from your profits. 

3. Gain Insights Into Fuel Impact On Machine Operations

Performing regular oil analysis will also help you gain insights into the impact of fuel consumption on plant machinery and equipment operations, such as metal wear and corrosion. For example, machine wear analysis can be performed to detect and analyze the presence of particles brought about by the plant machinery’s consumption of petroleum fuel.

These are the different types of machine wear:

• Abrasive or cutting wear
• Adhesive or sliding wear
• Corrosive wear
• Fatigue wear

Performing a complete machine wear particle analysis would be able to detect and measure the following impurities:

• Presence of large ferrous particles
• Wearing down of metal and alloy elements
• Particle count and distribution
• Particle shape and morphology
• Soot (nano-sized carbon particles which are combustion byproducts) 

4. Oil Analysis Can Test Lubrication System Condition

Proper maintenance of a plant machinery’s lubrication system is vital to operating it efficiently. These are some of the things that can happen when machines aren’t lubricated properly:

• It can cause bearing failures (54% of the time)
• It can cause damage to roller bearings (50%)
• Improper lubrication can cause mechanical failures (43%)
• It can cause failure of equipment (70%)

For instance, you need to find out if there are fuel and coolant leaks. You need to monitor the additive levels. You can prevent machine failures and breakdowns if you can detect these things early on.

You can use the information that you gather from oil analysis to come up with solutions on how to eliminate or at least mitigate the lubrication issues of your machines. 

5. Detect Problems Building Up Before They Worsen

Detecting problems that may already be building up in your plant machinery will help you prevent them from worsening. By doing oil tests consistently, you’ll be able to identify small and emerging issues before they can cause major disruptions.

Oil analysis can detect specific areas in your equipment that may be undergoing excessive wear and tear. Oil analysis can also identify if the operational inefficiency of your machines is being caused by issues with your filtration system.

For example, soot contamination may have already clogged your combustion system. This can cause multiple problems in your plant machinery and equipment. If left undetected, you’ll have to spend more time, effort, and money on major repairs when they break down. 

6. Less Frequent Unscheduled Downtime And Repairs

Minor issues and small problems in plant machinery and equipment will worsen if they’re not detected and addressed early on. They can cause major disruptions and unscheduled downtimes when they bog down unexpectedly. When your plant machinery and equipment aren’t running at full capacity utilization and optimal efficiency, this will have an impact on your business operations and productivity. Ultimately, it’ll increase your operating expenses, thus, resulting in less profits.

Oil analysis can trace if there are high levels of metal wear, which could be an indicator that some internal parts may already be breaking down. Some of the things to watch out for are viscosity, additive levels, and particle count. If escalating trends in these indicators have been detected, it could mean the existence of either cross or external contamination.

7. Get A Detailed Breakdown Of You Lube System’s Performance

Another benefit of performing regular onsite oil analysis is that you’ll be able to get a detailed breakdown of your lube system’s performance. This information will enable you to identify problems based on the types of contaminants causing the problem.

There are certain contaminants that can cause serious equipment failure if you don’t detect them early on. For instance, leaks in your water or antifreeze system can put a heavy strain on your machine. The machine would have to exert more power to push the oil if it’s already thickened too much.

Water leaks can also mean that some seals are broken and that the machines aren’t operating at an optimal temperature level. Oil analysis would be able to detect traces of damage to your machine’s system or piston.

Conclusion

Petroleum inspection and testing will help you make sure that you’re buying high-quality petroleum fuel with minimal impurities and contaminants. Impurities and contaminants tend to affect the fuel performance. It can also hasten the wear and tear of plant machinery and components. Poor fuel performance results in less power output, lower production capacity and productivity, higher maintenance and repair costs, and less profits.