Hi Have an Volvo EC240 excavator with water contaminated hydraulic oil , looks like milk. Any tips on flushing the system ?
First, I’d try to find out how water was introduced... no good to get it clean if it will happen again. Also, after it sits for a few days, crack bottom drain plug on hyd tank, did clear water come out? Do this a couple of times and it should get the majority of the water out.
Please see attached. More to follow.
As mentioned above, find sources of water intrusion, otherwise this is just a very expensive bandaid. I have posted recommended flush/fill procedures as well as bleeding. As always, be careful. If you are unsure, ask. If you aren't confident , contract it out to someone who is. Something not mentioned. Before starting, swing the house 90* to the tracks. It gives you unrestricted access to the bottom of the hydraulic tank. When you're system is empty, I always recommend to pull all the tank covers and the lower cover as well as sump plate. You want to swab out everything. Clean the ledge that the filter sits in as well. Debris has the potential to hide on the ledge. Good luck.
Oh and BTW, maybe swing by the introduction thread and make an introduction for yourself. Let folks now what you do and what brings you by.
There is no good way to get it all out. I don't even know of a filter buggy system that will pull it out. All I've ever been able to do was drain it and pull hoses, flush with diesel and reinstall. Go to next hose and do the same for as many as possible. Refill the system and run the machine for awhile and then do it all over again. Water origins; someone refilled the system with contaminated oil, someone left something open to the weather, machine has been sitting in a wet climate for a very long time, leaking boom cylinders and the machine sitting for a long time. I'm sure others will chime in with other places and scenarios. I usually swing the house just enough so the hydraulic tank drain is in between the track frames. On most of the machines I've dealt with in the last few years, the drain plug is right at or covered up by the tracks when the house is at ninety degrees to the carbody.
If John says there is no good way then listen to him but I thought this was pretty impressive when I saw it:
I like that! Any idea what kind of filters were inside those canisters? I'm wondering if they can drain the water out the bottom of them over time? Who supplies that? We have filter carts here but nothing i've worked with or even seen does that.
That is impressive, I've never seen a good water removal filter unit.
Several hyd. filter carts on the market. Bigger hyd. shops will rent them. Donaldson, Parker and probably others have filters specifically to remove water. https://www.donaldson.com/content/d...draulic/F111375-ENG/Hydraulic-Filter-Cart.pdf https://www.parker.com/Literature/EMHFF/HFD_Catalog/HFD_Catalog_Filter_Carts.pdf
The Parker site mentions Par-Gel Technology. Says it only removes free water. Does anyone know anything about this?
Most all filter manufacturer's sell a water absorbing filter. However, a 12" tall filter will only remove less than a tablespoon of water. They're made more for preventative maintenance than clean up after the fact.
I think what you'd want to do is drain the old oil, clean as much as you can in the reservoir and easily accessible areas and run a filter cart with new oil to remove as much of the remaining water as possible. Changing filters a few times if necessary is a lot easier and a lot cheaper than replacing hyd. components. Some filter carts tell you when the filters need changing and have test ports so the oil can be tested to get the required cleanliness level.
My original experience with filter carts is that the differential pressure gauge is for filter plugging and the filters are made of cellulose. Cellulose expands with water and shuts off flow through it. If those were paper filters in the video, that gauge would have pegged over in a couple of minutes. What ever was in the cart in the video had to be using a coalescer which is like a screen that stops large molecules from passing through. My problem with what I saw is that the water drops to the bottom of the canister and has to be drained out. Now I had coalescers on the ships for fuel when I was in the navy. I've never heard of it for hydraulic oil so would be very interested in whatever was in that piece of video.
Talking with Donaldson/Parker and/or a hyd. shop experienced with the latest filter carts and cartridges would likely provide some good insight. The people making the filters should know the most of what they are capable of cleaning.
Here you are, Sir. https://www.precisionfiltration.com/product/phoenix-membrane-oil-purifier/
I sent an email for information. I will report back on what I find out.
Good job, because you’re not the only one who is interested in the reply.
I'll be very interested in what you find out also John.
This equipment has been around since at least 2012... and this is the first I've heard of it
Apparently they don't market much to people like us?
An untapped market for them..?
David Haley the guy who posted the video is accessible, I am sure he can answer any questions if you get ahold of him. Sounds like that cart was new to them too.
Available but very expensive. Not sure it would pay for a small company to own one. Very interested to see you hear back.
There is a company from India quote us around 3,500 USD (Three thousand and five hundreds) door to door price. The machine specification is: Made in India. a)- 01 micron filter---------------02 units. b)- 149 micron filter-------------01 unit. c)- 10 micron filter---------------01 unit. d)- 1.5 kW heater-----------------01 unit. e)- 3.0 kW heater-----------------01 unit. f)- 10 Lpm hydraulic pump------01 unit. Filtration speed: 550 L/Hr. with 10 micron filter or 50 L/Hr. with 01 micron filter. Is that reasonable price??
The Working Principle of their machine. ...and link for reference: https://www.klaroloilcleaningsystems.net/hydraulic-oil-cleaning-system.html Working Principle: Cleans oil in two stages using three different methods. In the first stage, oil enters the filter to be cleaned by absorption. All solid contaminants up to five microns are removed in this stage. The oil then passes at a controlled flow rate into the evaporation chamber, which is heated to ensure a dry airspace. Controlling the flow of oil ensures formation of thin oil film in the evaporation chamber. These conditions are ideal to evaporate moisture, lower oxidized molecules of water, air & gases from the oil. Purified oil then goes back into the parent tank. The depth filter also removes insoluble contamination like sludge, varnish and particles smaller than a micron by absorption i.e. (attracting and trapping the contamination in its filtering medium) when oil is continuously cycled. Initial by products of oxidation, like metal salts & water catalyze the process of oxidation making it a chain reaction. Oxidized lower molecular weight products are initially soluble in oil. Over a period of time, they polymerize into heavy molecular weight products which turn into sludge, varnish and lacquer thereby causing malfunctioning of the machine. These have the capability of removing all solid by products of oxidation. It is also capable of removing water and the oxidized lower molecular weight products of the oil. By removing these contaminants, Klarol ensures that the process of oxidation is minimized and the chain reaction is broken. Removal of the lower molecular weight products, ensures that there is no formation of sludge, varnish and lacquer. Primary reason for thermal degradation of oil is aeration in the oil. Klarol prevents oil from getting thermally degraded by releasing free air from oil. Klarol is different from other oil filtration machines! It not only removes but also prevents generation of contamination.
You might be able to get a US built or European model for the same or less cost. Also worth seeing if a rental unit might be available from a larger hyd. shop or equipment dealer.
Thank you Lachau. That's probably the best price I've seen for this type of unit, I don't like the idea of using galvanized pipe fittings on hydraulic units. I'm wondering if just the filter unit itself is available.
Galvanized fittings make the whole thing suspect. The filters themselves look small compared to other types and I don't know how advanced India is when it comes to hydraulics. "Prevents generation of contamination"??? Sorry but sounds like a lot of hype and not much substance to me. I'd trust Donaldson, Parker, Phoenix or other well known names.
So I watched the original video again and the filter cart they used on the skidder looks to be a Harvard Corporation built unit. Google has a fair amount of info on it. I've actually spent a fair amount of time in the past looking into removing water from hydraulic oil and came to the conclusion that vacuum dehydration was the way to go but it's very expensive to set up. I have a unit that came out of a power plant that was used for transformer oil but I was unable to find new filter socks for it. I see that Harvard has quite a few different ones so I'm hopeful that they might have one that will fit my unit.
I got an email from the folks at PFP this morning and am conversing about costs and options. They have a filter setup in addition to the membrane dehydration units. The membrane units are out of my capabilities cost wise so I asked for capabilities on the filter units. I'll post info as I get it.
I had bad water contamination in my Samsung 225. I removed all cylinders and drained hoses the best I could. I then drained tank and refilled then proceeded to run for 5 minutes operating all hydraulics and then drained the hydraulic oil. Did the procedure 5 times. Has been running great the last few years with no sign of water.
Sounds awful expensive if you had to pay someone else to do all that. I’m looking for a less expensive way to clean out the residual water after dumping the tank.
Exactly, every time I have flushed and changed fluids I look at the cost, time and how many gallons it takes and then even draining every bit we can after you run everything it seems like you really didn't get it very clean
Looks like some or all of these would be worth a try. They list hydraulic oil. http://globalindustrialsolutions.net/equipment-manuals/donaldson-water-absorption-filters http://www.swiftfilters.com/water-removal-filter-elements.php https://www.argo-hytos.com/fileadmi...n/downloads/Datasheet_Exapor_Aqua_9050_US.pdf https://www.parker.com/portal/site/...stci=eaf8349f76489410VgnVCM100000200c1dacRCRD https://www.eastcoastfilter.com/c2/c63/c105/water-absorbing-elements-c268.html http://www.kaydonfiltration.com/pro...removal-elements/kqd-water-absorbing-elements
Got some numbers on the filters that are supposed to dry out the hydraulic oil. One filter load of contamination is approximately 18 ounces. The filters are over $104.00 a piece. There are 128 ounces to a gallon so to remove one gallon of water from the system would take a minimum of seven filters with a price tag of $740 just in filters. That doesn't count any labor or extra parts to hook the filters into the system and it assumes the filter would catch all of the water. The 5 GPM filter buggy for the filter setup can be gotten for around $3,400. The vacuum dehydrators start at around $10,000 for the small units and can run up to $25,000 for the eight gallon a minute units. So figuring a 50 gallon hydraulic system in a mid size excavator and new oil cost a conservative $8.00 a gallon if purchased in bulk, you are looking at a $400 replacement cost. It's cheaper to just flush and replace rather than use the filters to take out the water. As far as the dehydrator goes in this section of the country, it might pan out if you can get $1,000 per use to recoup the capital cost. On a twenty ton machine, the cost of change and pull apart the machine systems, reassemble and then filter is probably going to run around $3,000 for oil and labor. The dehydrator might be a bargain. It's worth looking into some more.
Cost me about 1500 dollars total and maybe a day and half of time.
Hey John, could you please send me a link to that filter site, I'd like to do some looking into them. A number of years ago I was looking into vacuum dehydration vs centrifuge ect. and it's expensive either way. I'm not sure I want to spend that much time cleaning hyd. systems just to pay off the equipment. A year or so ago a local welding shop did some line boring and cylinder repacks on Deere wheel loader and left the hyd. tank cap off for a week in January. I flushed it 5-6 times with cheap Tractor Supply oil, then once with Deere oil and have watched it since and it appears to be good. Probably cost them $2000.00.
excavator, Here is the sales reps contact info. If you PM me an email address, I'll forward you his response with a couple attachments that might answer some questions. Todd Schulberger Technical Filtration Sales Precision Filtration Products 267.923.6043 direct 215.679.6645 main 215.679.6648 fax www.pfpusa.com [email protected]
Well! The equipment owners around here will say that you guys worry about nothing! They run equipment with oil in hydraulic systems and transmissions for years know about it and don’t give rats behind!!! The reasoning is something like this: if we start flushing oil out of every piece of equipment and every time it gets water in it - we will spent thousands upon thousands of dollars! And if some component will fail - well it’s was old anyway. I am dealing with water in hydraulic oil all day everyday! To say I’m in cultural shock - will be GROSS understatement!!!
GODSDOZER Did that count the amount of labor you put into the job. Do you have any idea how much water was actually in the system? How much do you figure your time is worth? How much does your local dealer charge for field time? I don't think a dehydrator would ever pay on an owner basis unless they had a lot of machines and big problems with personnel.
I'm sure you meant water Running water in a hydraulic system will take years off the life of the components in the system. If you are running junk to start with, well who cares. If it happens on a low hour machine still under warranty, I don't know anyone up here in the mood to just flush away money because it's too much bother.
I know what you mean... I was standing next to one of the guys as he was dumping in some 46wt. talking to him and I look down and see two different liquids exiting the pail spout I scream out a STOP!!! He looks at me kinda mad and says it's only a little water!!! Turns out he had 'pierced' the top of the 5gal bucket the last time he poured out of it so it would pour faster... and then left it out side to get rain in it....
Y2K has membrane system, they quoted me $7000 just components to add to existing cart. In industrial hydraulics there’s thing called “head space flush”. Maybe it will help you with mobile system. https://www.hydraulicsupermarket.com/blog/all/remove-water-from-hydraulic-oil/
I don’t know how to load up video here, I would show you the nastiest gooiest disgusting slime that is in GroveS RT58c Clark 18000 transmission. Will share some screen shots. But you guys better not get me started on a sore subject - I might just go on wining and bi..ing about it forever!!!
Yes sorry John I meant water! Although when Sergiy from Insane Hydraulics saw couple of my pictures he said: eew!, that’s nasty! There’s too much oil in that water!!! i deal with people around here who have a lot of money, although I can’t figure out how in the world they made all of that money! Because when you see how they treat their equipment it doesn’t make any sense! They will waste tens of thousands of dollars on something insignificant and of not much use, but then wouldn’t buy parts or perform maintenance on equipment that supposedly make them money!
On how water gets in to system: mostly through lids and breathers! Bad O-rings and gaskets, look for places where lids is flush with tanks top. Second is failed cylinder wipers and seals, Also seldom but drive motors seals and even worn out center pivots. BTW that guy on the video with harvester, I told him the reason why he is having water in the system - is flush with the tanks top lid and cork gasket, but his argument was that tank is underneath of the cab! Well it’s all fine and dandy, until machine sits level, as soon as it’s not level water will flow on surfaces and pool up in low spots looking for point of ingress! This one is just two days ago, Hyster didn’t deburr anything in this sandwich style return filter housing that bolts underneath of cover that sits flush with tanks top AGAIN. I actually remembered to take pictures too late, and took photo of smallest of big burrs Hyster left there! Because of these gaskets didn’t seal the surfaces and water was able to get in! I cut my hands handling these parts several times.!
Job security and money in your pocket. Thanks for the photos.
Yep! That’s one way how to look at it. But I’m tired to deal with nasty crap, I want to work with clean oil.