Situation

A leading manufacturer of custom aluminum extruded shapes and drawn tubing in Southern IL had a mechanical failure in one of their heat exchangers attached to a 3000 gallon hydraulic reservoir. This particular failure resulted in a large influx of water to be introduced into the oil of the hydraulic system. The MobilServ lab results showed a 2.15% vol of water, which equates to 21,500ppm, with a particulate count of 24/22/18 @ 4/6/14 micron. With the data provided we then calculated there to be roughly 60-65 gallons of water contamination.

Solution

MDI dispatched its reliability team the following day to draw the excess water ingress within the system out through vacuum dehydration. MDI’s vacuum dehydration unit (WANDA) heats and circulates the system to remove water and contamination through a series of five particulate filters. Over a span of 170 hours the hydraulic reservoir returned to appropriate operational standards & reduced the water content to 3ppm with a ISO cleanliness of 20/18/15.

Impact

With the quick response and mobilization by MDI, their team helped the manufacturing facility reduce potential costly equipment failure due to cavitation & corrosion. Replacement oil was not needed and with a cost of $1500-$2000 per hour of downtime; MDI was able to save this facility an estimated $125,000 in total costs.