Have you ever had someone ask if you want to save money on your air compressor oil? Well it’s really not that difficult to achieve some pretty major savings, just by following some best in class practices: Especially if you're operating several air compressors.

A significant saving can be had by moving away from time-based oil changes on air compressors. The real cost of changing 20 lt’s of air compressor oil is not just the cost of the oil, but once you take into account the direct and supervisory labour and downtime you
could easily be looking at an astounding factor of 40 times the oil cost! Using the methods described in this article the life of the lubricant can be extended way past the pre-scribed change intervals.

Don’t believe that drain and fill is always necessary. It is best practice to only use a drain-and-fill strategy on small compressors where the cost of modifying the air compressor with quick connects for periodic decontamination with a filter cart (As described below) is more cost-prohibitive than the lubricant replacement cost.

Conversely, large sump volumes of air compressor lubricant should not be on a calendar cycle for a yearly drain and fill. Instead, these applications should be on an “on-condition” drain and fill. An on-condition drain and fill is performed based on the condition of the lubricant from oil analysis. This enables the oil to tell you when it needs to be changed from the oil analysis trending results of its physical and chemical properties. Oftentimes, you loose a tremendous amount of a lubricant’s remaining useful life by changing the oil too soon or frequently. Many times compressor oil is changed because of factors you can control, such as contamination.

For really large volumes of lubricant, such as turbine lube systems, the best strategy to employ is the “bleed-and-feed” method. This method reduces the volume of the system by 75 to 80 percent and introduces new oil back into the system. This process will help decrease the amount of existing contaminants by draining them, reduce their concentration with the addition of new clean lube and bring in fresh additives with the addition of the new lubricant. Many in-service turbine oils will have more than 10 years of life, but by adding 6 to 8 percent makeup oil per year, the life can be infinite.

It’s vital to conduct scheduled air compressor oil analysis to examine fluid properties, contaminants and various kinds of wear debris to determine machine health. Each aspect of lube analysis can help correlate mechanical issues well before any other technology. Oil analysis on your compressor lube is comparable to a blood test on the human body. It has been said that more than 70 percent of failures are lubricant related.

One of the benefits of lubricant analysis is that it detects problems in both the air compressor oil and the compressor. It can also detect some defects earlier than other technologies. Lube analysis is often referred to as the first line of defence as far as predictive technologies are concerned. The oil sample reports will define the following items:

• The presence of foreign fluids or destructive surface contaminants
• The overall physical and chemical condition of the fluid
• Presence of mechanical wear materials, how much and of what type and morphology

There’s a mistaken belief that dirty air compressor oil is bad lubricant and needs to be changed. When lube is just dirty from contamination, you can clean it up by using many different types of filtration methods, depending on the type of contaminant you want to remove. For particle and moisture contaminants, a filter cart equipped with particulate and moisture-stripping filters is an ideal choice. A filter cart allows for periodic decontamination to occur while the compressor is still in operation by using quick connectors to safely and easily hook up the filter cart and letting it run for 30 or 40 minutes.

The option for unattended filtration while the air compressor is still in operation allows the technician to spend his time performing other tasks that may require his attention in a nearby area. It is true that certain contaminants will increase the rate of degradation of the base stock, but quick removal can extend your compressor oil drain intervals substantially, resulting in a cost savings in lubricant consumption and disposal.

And we’ve saved the best for last: The simplest cost saving can be achieved by switching to synthetic compressor lubricant. This may seem strange when you’re paying more per litre, but makes sense when you understand that you have to perform 2 to 5 times less lube changes. Using synthetic air compressor oil you don’t need to change lubricant seasonally. You’ll also love the extended life of the equipment and the 8%-12% savings on the utility bills. There are many more reasons why to use synthetic air compressor oil.

By following these simple best in class practices you’ll be able to, not only achieve significant cost savings, but using synthetic air compressor oil you’ll also protect your assets for years to come.