Thursday, February 21, 2013

Filter this.



In response to reflections on learning.  From what I have read and from personal experience, this is what I have come up with. In regards to added capacity, it is in some ways obvious how this method would extend intervals. One way to look at would be is if we put a pinch of dirt in a cup of water or in a bucket of water, which would essentially be cleaner, the bucket right?  Right. Oil is not exactly water but you get the picture. Besides cooling, lubing, and cleaning oil also absorbs contaminates from the combustion chamber, which in most cases cannot be filtered by a regular oil filter. So my take on it is that the more oil you have the more of the contaminants you can absorb thus increasing the longevity of your oil. With modern engines and the machines they go in becoming more and more compact it would be difficult to increase oil capacity, so it would make more sense for larger or stationary engines where space is not of concern.
As far as kidney loop filtration, my knowledge on it is this; in a regular filtered system for continuous oil flow and desired pressure, the oil must be passed through the filter at a substantially fast rate. At this higher rate only larger particles can be effectively removed from the oil, while leaving the oil contaminated with other contaminants. Kidney filtration is a process that takes a good percentage out of the oil and filters it separately from the oil that is constantly being cycled, allowing for slower filtration of the oil and removal of contaminants, after which it is returned to the cycled oil. This process however requires a lot more oil, setup cost and in some cases multiple “kidneys” for more efficient and constant filtration. It also takes up quite a bit of room as you can imagine, leaving this type of setup almost exclusively to stationary application.  

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