A boroscope inspection of the main turbine oil reservoir at a major power plant revealed paint chips in the reservoir, puddles of water, red-iron oxide particles (rust) and babbitt material in one of the main return lines. The babbitt can most likely be attributed to a hydrogen fire that occurred more than five years ago and wiped the bearings. As this fire occurred in the summer and electricity prices were high, a flush at that time was not performed. Actually the turbine lube oil system has not been flushed in more than seven years. Among other things, this has led to a concern that if babbitt debris were to appear in a recent oil sample, it would not be possible to tell if the babbitt is from the fire five years ago or presently being generated by bearing wear.

The plant is currently in a maintenance outage that will last for only a few more weeks. The system definitely needs to be flushed but the general feeling is that the babbitt has been in the return line for five years and thus far has not caused any problems - so why do it now? Likewise, it is believed that the paint chips will be caught by the filters located on the bearing supply line.

Operations would like to wait until the next outage (two years down the road) to flush the system. Plant maintenance thinks it would be wise to flush now. What would be your recommendation?

Submit your answer at http://www.noria.com/challenge.asp before Tuesday, January 20, 2004. Lube-Tips editors will choose the best answer and the $100 recipient will be announced next week.

Place the adhesive labels around the bottom half of oil sample bottles. This makes it a lot easier to see the fluid as it nears top or neck of the sample bottle. (Submitted by Randy Norton, Plant Maintenance Optimization Coordinator,
Tucson Electric Power Company. Thanks Randy!)

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From "The Practical Handbook of Machinery Lubrication"

A heavy truck fleet was experiencing high fuel costs in combination with what it felt was premature differential gear and bearings, using a good quality 80W/90 gear lubricant. Field testing with a semi-synthetic gear lubricant with a wider viscosity range of 75W/90 reduced the failure rate and provided a fuel economy improvement of over 3 percent.

More information about the book "The Practical Handbook of Machinery Lubrication"