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Racor filters maximise coal mine performance

A Parker Hannifin - Parker Sales UK product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 3, 2009

Parker Hannifin has revealed that its Racor hydrocarbon filters are being used to filter more than 45 million litres of diesel each month in a Columbian opencast coal mine.

The company said that by installing filtration at its fuel storage tank farm, the mine has reduced its maintenance costs and increased the service life of its highway trucks, tractors, excavators and generators.

With such a high consumption of diesel fuel, the mine looked for an effective engineering solution to reduce its operating costs: the contamination of fuel by solids, sediment and water.

To minimise this problem, the mine invited local distributor, Fuel Filters de Columbia, to install Parker Racor hydrocarbon filters at its fuel tank storage farm, in order to clean the diesel that it was buying from its providers.

The mine subsequently asked the distributor to install additional filtration systems with high-efficiency and high-capacity media for tank dispatch and diesel-recirculation systems, improving engine performance further.

Once installed, considerable field testing was carried out and the results obtained were evaluated by certified laboratories.

These companies recorded significant improvements in fuel cleanliness: original contamination levels of 30mg/l of sediment and 400ppm of water were reduced by approximately 500 per cent to 6mg/l and 70ppm after installation of the Parker filters.

As a result, the mine has been able to extend the life of its generator engines to 23,000h, reduce the cost of maintaining its electronic injection systems, and extend the life of its onboard fuel filters.

Additionally, the mine's productivity has been optimised due to improvements in the reliability and availability of its mining equipment, while fuel consumption and soot index levels have both been reduced.

These improvements were made possible due to the fact that engine oil has the major task of cleaning the engine of combustion-process deposits.

Clean and dry diesel generates a lower level of undesirable combustion by-products in a well-maintained engine, extending lube oil change-out intervals.

The biggest improvements made by the installation of Parker's Racor hydrocarbon coalescers, separators and pre-filters were in the mine's generator engines, with engine oil and oil-filter life extended from 250h to 1,000h.

By improving the cleanliness of the fuel used by the Columbian coal mine, the Parker technology has maximised the performance and operating life of plant and equipment throughout the facility, while reducing maintenance costs and downtime.

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