How Do You Prolong The Useful Life Of Lubricants?

How do you prolong the useful life of lubricants?

Wind turbines towering hundreds of feet over many landscapes herald a future of endless, clean energy.

But in a crucial sense, turbines remain rooted in the past: Much like with your car, their engines require lubrication to run smoothly. The question for many chemical engineers is, how do you prolong the useful life of the lubricants?

In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vineeth Chandran Suja, a Stanford graduate student in chemical engineering, explores one of the core problems: foaming oil.

The problem, he says, is that whether it’s in your car or a wind turbine, each time metal gears grind against other metals, oil gets sloshed around and mixed with air. This often results in the formation of tiny bubbles with varying lifespans. If the bubbles don’t immediately burst, they soon collect into a foam, which is one of the primary mechanisms of engine decline.

The foam is harmful in a variety of ways. It degrades the lubricant and allows gears to grind. Oxygen trapped in oil foams causes the metal parts to oxidize, that is, to rust. And the foam acts like a thermal insulator, trapping harmful heat in the system. Hence, lubricant manufacturers are actively looking for ways to mitigate lubricant foaming.

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