Avoid Costly Shutdowns Utilizing Historical Info in Oil Analysis

History isn't everyone's favorite subject, but just like in society, it is important to know the history of your equipment so that you can determine why an issue has surfaced and how to properly fix it.

Why is it So Important to Keep All of Your Equipment Records?

Utilizing historical information in oil analysis is so incredibly important in order to take a holistic approach when interpreting data. When a problem occurs and starts to disrupt your process, it is essential to have a full log of that machine's history. Much like a puzzle, you wouldn't get the full picture if a few critical pieces were missing. The same goes for your plant equipment!

For example, we had a customer in the power generation industry who was having a foaming issue. They originally tested the oil for foam, which came back negative, but the issue still persisted. Their solution was to replace the 50,000 gallons of oil to get rid of the foam. As you can imagine, this would be a huge expense, not only to replace the oil but for the downtime as well.

So, we started sifting through their record to see if there were any indicators of what might have happened to cause this foam. Unfortunately, their records were sparse, and it seemed like there wasn't going to be a solution. All of their employees in that department were newer and didn't know much about the history.

Thankfully, an employee who used to work in that department was able to tell us about a repair that happened on that machine. This repair was the cause of the foam.

After knowing the cause, they were able to fix the repair to eliminate air from entering the oil, which stopped the foaming.

By knowing this little piece of information, they were able to save themselves from completely replacing all of the oil.

This is just one example of why it is essential to keep a record of events like top-offs, repairs, overhauls, failures, and more.

Learn More About TestOil and Historical Info in Oil Analysis

If you are interested in learning more about how TestOil's services can help your plant, contact us today. You can also download our Critical Pieces to the Puzzle eBook to learn more.