Environmental Stewardship through careful application of Beneficial Technology
Bryan Johnson PVNGS Lubrication Engineer
Bryan.Johnson@
aps.com
Introduction
As an industry we have long thought of Tribology as the study of lubrication, friction and wear. This view may, however, be somewhat limiting. Lubrication is a key design element required for efficient machinery operation. Its function within the machine system can be thought of as a unique component or part used in concert with other design elements to reduce frictional loss or surface wear. The market is being driven towards change by political mandate and environmental concerns to continuous incremental optimization of the lubricant function. This heightens the importance of the role and function of lubricants leading to product evolution. The application of innovative and advanced product design are often not readily leveraged to the end customer or perhaps completely understood within industry leaving opportunity for additional efficiency gains.
The Lubrication Engineer: The oil formulator’s skills are instrumental in creating a product which reduces wear and manages the energy lost to friction. The full value of the finished product may be reduced through the choice (or lack) thereof that is made at the point of application. The selection by the end user of the most appropriate lubricant is vital to reliable machine operation as it relates to the machine energy requirement and wear rate which will ultimately require replacement of the machinery. The importance of making the optimal lubricant selection may be beyond the knowledge level of the end user necessitating the skill set of the product supplier or lubrication engineer to fill the gap.
Maintaining lube cleanliness is an end user function. A rigorous cleanliness program is known to extend machinery service and defer the onset of wear. “Friction creates heat and promotes wear. It is estimated that 1 / 3 to 1 / 2 of power production is consumed (or lost) through friction. The cost of wear in the United States for example is estimated at 2 / 3 the cost of the source energy”, (
www.stle.org - resources, 2014). The summed cost of both friction and wear scales similarly to the overall cost of power generation. The direct global economic cost or benefit in how the lubricant is applied, when considered relative to the cost of power generation, is significant and maybe globally quantifiable. To the end user, the monetary impact of optimal lubricant usage; however, may be hidden. It is incumbent upon the lubrication engineer or the product specialist to be sensitive to lubricant optimization to fill this gap.
Each citizen of the world makes choices which impact the world. These decisions produce a collective result to the betterment or harm of all. A key role of a lubrication engineer is to promote sustainability which has both a direct end user (customer) and
general environmental global benefit. In terms of the role of a world citizen, it can be argued that the lubrication engineer’s efforts to increase machine efficiency makes a measureable difference in reducing the environmental consequence of modern industrialization to include the carbon footprint though the reduction of energy consumed in operating machinery and in deferring the carbon costs associated with the manufacture of replacement parts and machines. When viewed through the perspective of friction and wear reduction, this benefit is clearly globally significant to the human enterprise and its goodness should be actively and broadly promoted by the lubrication industry.
As resource management and sustainability through the optimal application of lubricants results from insightful technical choice, so to can power generation can be thought of in a similar manner. Nuclear energy is a safe, reliable, clean and carbon free technology choice of generation which produces significant amounts of electricity throughout the world. This technology is not limited by environmental constraints such as the availability of sunshine or wind, it doesn’t produce a pollutant as a by-product of combustion and it has a small footprint (low environmental disturbance) relative to other generation technologies. Nuclear energy as a generation source is important to the electrical distribution system or grid as it produces reliable high-quality base load electricity on a 24/7 basis.
Nuclear Energy: Electricity from a nuclear energy plant is generated by creating steam used in the steam cycle to rotate a turbine and generator and as such, nuclear energy is a form of thermal power generation. An example of the thermal power generation cycle with a reactor as the heat source is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1, Example of key components and systems within a Pressurized Water.
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LUBE MAGAZINE NO.124 DECEMBER 2014
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