The post Inline Oil Condition Analysis on Power Generation Engines appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Oil and lubricants play a critical role in the operation of natural gas and biogas power generation engines, for example, in combined cycle (CC) and combined heat and power (CHP) plants. The oil condition gives valuable insight in the running status of the engine and many critical failures can be flagged.

Benefits of Real-time Monitoring

Conventionally, plant engineers operating and maintaining high-value assets, such as gas engines for power generation, rely on taking oil samples periodically and sending them to a laboratory for analysis. That whole supply chain is very laborious, but more importantly, it introduces a large time lag in the reporting of the oil condition that is lubricating critical parts of the system.

With real-time monitoring (Figure 1) of the oil condition, engineers and operators can have more intimate knowledge of their high-value power generation engine. The cost of ownership vastly decreases by having faster reaction time to failures or trends, by having effective maintenance and service planning, and allowing the plant engineers to extend oil change intervals and minimize engine downtime.…

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