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A New Life for Industrial Lubricants with Dialysis

Disposing of dirty, wet industrial oils was an expensive and delicate problem for companies that use large volumes of these fluids. That was until a process was developed to reclaim these oils by cleaning, dehydrating, even injecting additives to bring them back up to specifications. Now the concept of reclamation has been taken to a new level with the advent of dialysis.

Very similar to the way blood is revitalized in the process of kidney dialysis, oil dialysis hooks up to the "vessels" of the industrial application and revitalizes the oil at the rate of 1200 gallons per hour while the "body" of the application continues to operate.

Texaco Fluid Management (TFM), a service offered by a joint venture of Texaco and Shell, has been reclaiming oil for clients such as aluminum extruders, plastic injection molders, tire manufacturers, steel and paper mills and automotive manufacturers since 1994. Basically, TFM reclaims industrial oils, such as hydraulic oils, turbine oils, gear oils, paper machine oils, quench oils and some metalworking fluids. However, they do not reclaim detergent-containing oils, such as motor oils.

The company performs this service with reclamation and dialysis equipment housed in a 48-foot long trailer, all of which is powered by a Caterpillar 3306 genset rated at 225 kW. TFM has three – soon to be four – of these tractor-trailers rigs: two based in Houston, one in Dayton, OH, and a fourth unit appears destined for the southwestern U.S.

Bobby Bowden, a senior engineer for the joint venture (Equilon Enterprises LLC) is currently overseeing construction of the fourth trailer. As with the other trailers, the 3306 package will be mounted sideways (the radiator is mounted remotely), freeing up space for an air-conditioned office for the equipment operators. "The office was something we really needed," says Bowden. Mustang Power Systems was able to shorten the unit to meet this constraint. "That was important in our choosing Caterpillar for this application," Bowden continues. "Their price was also attractive, and Caterpillar's reputation for quality was a big factor."

Bowden concedes TFM is not the only player in this business. "One of the major reasons we've been so successful is we bring our own power supply," he says. "Our competitors usually require the customer to provide them with 150-amp, 480-volt service to the reclamation equipment. Even if the customer has that power source available, it's usually a hassle to set it up, and I believe presents an unnecessary safety issue. That kind of electrical power is very unforgiving."

TFM's procedure is designed to assure success. First, a one-gallon sample is analyzed for reclamation viability. Then the truck is dispatched, the reclamation is completed and finally a reclaimed sample is tested to verify the success of the operation.

"If the additive package is showing signs of depletion, we are able to re-additize the Texaco and Shell products to bring them back up to spec," says Bowden. "We also reclaim our competitors' oils, but we cannot re-additize them. The process costs the client about 75-85% of what it would cost to completely replace the oil. And, the beauty is they don't have to concern themselves with the cost and headache of used oil disposal."

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