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Is Turbine Flush Justified?
Mike Jones, Reliability Engineer, Honneywell
Nylon, Inc.
Without knowing the size of the reservoir and cost of the flush
it is harder to determine the correct answer, but I would suggest
moving forward with the flush of the system. Even though no damage
has been noticed yet there lots of things working against one
in this situation. If the debris were not removed and continues
to build, the return line could become plugged enough to reduce
flow. This could cause over lubrication of the bearing which could
lead to overheating and premature failure of the bearing.
As stated, with the babbit material that is currently there prediction
of the failure may be impossible. Another alternative may be to
replace the return line piping only and let the filters catch
the paint chips as stated earlier, but this would not aide with
condition monitoring of babbit wear. With all things presented
my recommendation would be to perform the flush, especially since
there are still a few weeks left of the outage. Hopefully this
helps.
See other responses
to this Readers Challenge.
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