Efficient Plant June 2021 - 24

lubricant management
Certified
Greases
Advance
Reliability
MANAGING LUBRICATION is a primary
component of your critical-asset reliability
strategy. Unfortunately, ensuring that assets
receive correct lubricants at proper intervals is
often in conflict with the organization's desire
to simplify lubricant selection and reduce
inventory.
Lubricating many of today's assets can be
rather involved, resulting in complex lubricant
needs and maintenance practices. According
to Chad Chichester, Application Development,
Molykote Specialty Lubricants, DuPont,
Midland, MI (dupont.com), poorly managed
lubrication procedures result in lubricant
inventory imbalance, i.e., too much use of
commodity lubricants and not enough use
of specialty lubricants.
In a shutdown (planned or unplanned),
turn-around time is short. If the proper lubricant
isn't available, end users search available
stock for alternatives that will allow them
to get assets up and running. Substitutions
such as this result in lubricants being used in
conditions for which they are not formulated
and/or tested. When this happens, reliability
suffers. The lubricant becomes the scapegoat
when assets perform poorly, and inventory
gets out of whack. The end result is that no
one is happy.
Grease selection is a difficult aspect of
lubrication management because few
understand how grease works. With so many
lubricating greases available to a maintenance
department, proper grease selection for an
24 | EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
Implement NLGI-certified greases to bridge the gap between commodity and specialty lubricants and
realize better asset reliability.
asset is predicated on determining whether
the lubricant can meet asset requirements. It's
often said that 80% of assets can be greased
with a commodity grease, while the remaining
20% require specialized greases.
This may or may not be true. Commodity
greases may contain rather universal components
such as lithium-thickened mineral oils
with anti-wear and antioxidant additives. In
terms of performance, however, there really is
no widely accepted performance specification.
Contrary to that, specialty greases may have
very specific performance criteria. Formulations
can be so specific that the greases cannot
be used across a wide asset base. For example,
a grease designed for high-temperature
performance may use specialty base fluids and
additives that resist heat, but those fluids may
not exhibit the required wear performance in
other applications. As it pertains to inventory
management, having greases that can address
a wide range of performance requirements
simplifies selection and keeps inventory to a
minimum.
NLGI's (National Lubricating Grease
Institute, Liberty, MO, nlgi.org), High-Performance
Multiuse (HPM) grease specification
delivers performance requirements for greases
designed to be used across a wide asset base.
HPM bridges some of the gaps between commodity
greases and specialty greases, while
establishing industry performance criteria
otherwise not fully addressed in commodity
greases. Note that HPM-certified greases
cannot cover all specialty-grease performance
requirements. There is still a place for commodity
and specialty greases.
Because HPM-certified products are new
to the market in 2021, prices are not yet
available. Users should consider the total cost
of ownership including potential asset failure,
preventive-maintenance intervals, and overall
inventory costs. While each lubricant strategy
is unique, adopting HPM specifications and
selecting greases certified to the HPM performance
requirements can ease grease selection
and have a positive impact on operational
reliability. EP
For more information about the NLGI High
Performance Multiuse grease certification, including
specification details, visit nlgi.org.
JUNE 2021

http://www.dupont.com http://www.nlgi.org http://www.nlgi.org http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

Efficient Plant June 2021

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