Cement Plant - Finish Mill Trunnion Bearings – Heavy Particulate Contamination

Problem:

A cement plant was facing major operational challenges: a cracked manifold was allowing massive ingression of cement dust into the trunnion bearing lube oil system of the Finish Mill, causing gear pump failures every 4-6 hours. The plant needed to find a way to run the mill continuously without daily shutdowns for 2 months, when the manifold was scheduled for repair during an upcoming outage.

The Oil Filtration Systems Solution:

A multi-stage filtration system was implemented, including a 7 GPM Portable Filter Cart plus 3-Stage Filter Housing Assembly loaded with multiple resin-impregnated pleated cellulose filter elements. Progressively finer filtration from 50-Micron to 5- Micron effectively removed large amounts of particulate contamination from the lube oil in single pass, protecting the gear pumps and preventing downtime.

The Results:

• Zero pump failures since the multi-stage filtration system was installed

• No operational downtime since the multi-stage filtration system was installed

• $500,000 per day downtime was averted, plus $2,000 per avoided pump replacement (more than 12 in previous 3 days)