Lubricant Storage and Handling
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BASICS
WES CASH NORIA CORPORATION
When to USE
HARD-PIPE Lubricant
DISPENSING
In all the plants I have visited, the lubrication systems that
seem to save the most time and labor for their maintenance
personnel are machines that are hard-piped to either a large bulk
oil tank or a large oil tote. While piping machines into a lube source
isn't a new concept, it is one that is rarely seen in practice. Usually
you find these types of systems employed at places like power
plants with large turbine systems that hold thousands of gallons of
oil, but they can be used for countless other applications as well.
Piping supply lines to machines makes sense in several situations. For instance, in many refineries there are countless rows of
Piping to a common lube oil tank
greatly reduces the amount of labor
required for an oil change and can
save as much as 90 percent of the
labor costs.
pumps all using the same lubricant. Since these pumps are
stationary and typically operated 24 hours a day, they would be
good candidates to be hard-piped together to a large oil tank.
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March - April 2013
| www.machinerylubrication.com
Piping to a common lube oil tank greatly reduces the amount of
labor required for an oil change and can save as much as 90
percent of the labor costs when compared to the storage and
handling of oil drums.
60%
of plants have machines that
are hard-piped to a large bulk
oil tank or a large oil tote,
based on a recent poll at
machinerylubrication.com
Another situation in which piping a machine to a lube oil tank
could be advantageous is when a machine or component has a high
oil consumption rate. I have seen some machines leak as much as
300 gallons of oil per week. All of this oil is reclaimed, the machine
is taken out of commission, and then new oil is added until it is
cleared to be returned to service. In these types of scenarios, having
a direct line to a bulk oil tank not only would reduce the labor costs
associated with handling drums but would also greatly decrease
the amount of time the machine is out of service.
When looking at the cost of an oil change, the oil usually
accounts for only a small percentage of the total cost, while the
cost of downtime or lost production due to the machine being out
