Maintaining the environment

Everything we do has an impact on the environment, and the influence that industry and individuals have on the environment has become an increasingly important topic of discussion. Over the life of a rotating asset the overall impact on the environment that it has can be seen in its energy consumption required for operation, maintenance required to provide reliability and the length of service life.

BIODEGRADABLE LUBRICANTS

In industries where the operation occurs outside of factories such as agriculture, marine, forestry, mining and water treatment, the environment is more directly influenced by machinery. The operating environment can also demand significant grease usage as a means for excluding or purging contamination. Although the consumption of grease on a single piece of equipment may seem small, the combination of lubrication points and the volume of grease that is used and often lost into the environment adds up over time.

Until more recent times, the perception of biodegradable lubricants tended to be that they compromised performance for environmental safety in comparison to typical industrial lubricants, however that is not necessarily the case anymore.

SKF grease, LGGB 2, was developed to meet the stringent performance demands of applications and has been tested and approved for steel-on-steel spherical plain, ball and roller bearings. The grease is based on synthetic ester oil, lithium/calcium thickener and other biodegradable ingredients, and it has low toxicity, while providing good corrosion inhibiting properties and suitability for medium to high loading.

REDUCED GREASE CONSUMPTION

High levels of grease consumption in bearings is more often related to providing a sealing function or purging contamination from the bearing. Improvements to sealing and design of bearing arrangements can enable bearings to operate reliably with significantly less relubrication without reducing the service life, and often becoming relubrication free assemblies.

The SKF Food Line bearing units, installed with the SKF 2RF seal, are manufactured without any relubrication feature in the housing and have been tested under high pressure wash-down. The elimination of additional relubrication, particularly when close to food production, is both beneficial environmentally and addresses the risk of product contamination.

Sealed spherical roller bearings come equipped with contact seals and lubricated with a highperformance SKF grease. For many application conditions the bearings would not require relubrication and can be considered relubricationfree while the effective contact seals keep lubricant in and contaminants out to significantly increase service life. In a typically contaminated environment, a sealed bearing has a rating life of up to four times that with an open bearing.

CHAIN LUBRICATION

Proper lubrication of both conveyor and transmission chain reduces the energy consumption to drive the application, but also extends the service life of the chain by reducing pin and bush wear. Common lubrication of a chain by oil drip or a brush may be a preferred method, however the result is normally lubricating parts of the chain which do not require oil, such as the side plates, rather than the wearing components around the pin.

Use of a lubrication system, such as the SKF Oil Projection System, precisely delivers a metered volume of lubricant to the points of friction of each chain link whilst the chain is in operation. Airless projection nozzles have no mechanical contact with the chains thus minimizing applicator wear and dirt accumulation

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT YOUR LOCAL AUTHORISED SKF DISTRIBUTOR OR OR EMAIL CUSTOMERSERVICE.NZ@SKF.COM