IR UP6 - lot's of oil carry over | Air Compressor Guide

Question Title: IR UP6 - lot's of oil carry over
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Hi, this is a great web site!

We have a couple of UP6-20 screw drive compressors for a warehouse that we rotate out on a weekly basis. Last week one of our mechanics noticed a large loss of coolant in one of the compressors.

Coolant oil was added to the compressor this week and the unit has maintained its level without a problem.

What we also noticed this week was a large amount of oil in our water oil seperator outside.

This oil condinsate seperator unit has always had pretty clean water coming out of the drain off side of the seperator. Now when you open the lid on the seperator unit you can see dark oil floating on top of the water.

The seperator filter for the compressor has been changed out within the last 6 months and the unit has 4000 hours on it currently.

My question is what would cause a compressor to push out this amount of oil out the condensate lines or pressure lines and then not show any signs of a problem after a top off of oil.

One note to add, our parts department tends to substitute OEM filters for items they can cross reference.

Answers & Replies

Cas

10 years ago

Hi Brian,

First, thanks for the nice comment about my website :) I work hard to try to make it the best :)

I have experienced the same thing as you a few times: the compressor spits out a lot of oil at some point, but after checking it, everything seems fine and it never happens again.

Here are a few things that I came up with through the years, to explain this strange phenomenon :)

The scavenge line was temporary blocked.

The scavenge line normally sucks up oil the oil that collects on the bottom of the separator element. If the line gets blocked, it will stop doing that.

If the blocking is temporary (can happen sometimes), this might result in a temporary oil carry-over problem.

The compressor was running too hot. When your compressor runs hot, the oil becomes thin and the oil carry-over will increase. The high temperature is often a result of a low oil level, so it's a circle..

yes, this will result in a higher oil-carry-over, but not in the huge quantities that you describe.

It's a user problem.

This is the most probable cause of the problem. Very often, the compressor users will abuse the machine.

In your case, they might simply stop the compressor by hitting the emergency switch, or by disconnecting the main breaker.

When the compressor is running loaded and is suddenly stopped by the emergency switch, you can get a lot of oil carry over to your compressed air system, especially if it happens often.

You will also see another phenomenon: oil/compressor air flowing back through the inlet valve to the inlet filter... so a oil-dirty inlet filter is a sign of customer abuse :)

Really, you can ask around and sometimes they admit it, but many times not. I found out a couple of times by looking at the error log and saw 'emergency stop' a lot of times (especially on Friday afternoons when people are eager to go home!!!).

Of course, this doesn't have to be the problem in your case, but it could be.

Good luck! And let me know if you need any more info!

Cas.