PdM lubricant health What's Your Oil Telling You? Paying attention to what lubricants 'say' can protect equipment from catastrophic failure. IN AN ENVIRONMENT where equipment is expected to run continuously under extreme operating conditions, its failure can bring production to a halt. One important aspect of ensuring that machines run optimally is proper lubrication management. Effective lubrication of critical equipment involves more than just changing or topping off oil on a regular basis, however. To ensure maximum uptime and efficiency, it's necessary to understand the problems indicated in your oil. Oil analysis and intelligence predict lubrication problems and address them before a catastrophic failure occurs. PREDICTION VS. PREVENTION Traditional maintenance has involved timebased preventive activities in which lubricants are changed and equipment is tested after a set amount of time. Like a regular oil change and tune-up on a car, this level of maintenance assumes systems are running properly and there's no apparent concern for a failure. To find and fix problems before failure occurs, predictive maintenance (PdM) considers oil condition to determine when to perform an activity. Traditionally, monitoring and testing has been through thermography (looking for heat signals and hot spots) or vibration analysis to signal unwanted friction, wear, and inefficiency. While these technologies have been well accepted in industry, they're not 24 | EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM MARCH 2018http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM