Bearing Housing Protection : The Significance

Bearings are a kind of components which work on precision. It is necessary to fuel them with clean lubricants in ample amount so that they can survive for a longer period of time. The slightest of contamination within the bearings can lead to major losses in terms of equipment reliability and uptime.

Contamination Source
The main source of contamination within bearing housings are the air borne water vapor or the water stream sourced from the hose-down operations. The traditional styled labyrinth seals or the lip seals are not very effective in keeping the bearing housings intact i.e. free from foreign contamination. Contamination can also occur due to the entry of contaminants either through a breather vent or from the non-pressure balanced constant level lubricators. In fact, oil contamination can also take place due to the abraded oil ring material which users often skip considering.

Solutions to Avoid Contamination

In order to avoid contamination, one needs to have appropriate bearing housing seals, as the breathing process (exchange of internal and external air) within bearings during the switching periods of operation and shutdown can attract contaminants from the environment. This interchange of air in bearing housings happen because while in operation, the temperature increases making the gas volume expand and during shut down, with the drop in temperature, the gas volume contracts. Ill fitted or open seals of bearing housings promotes such to and fro movement of moisture laden contaminated air.

The obvious solution to this problem is shutting off all the means of interchanging air. The breather vents should either be removed or plugged well for use. A pressure compensated constant level lubricator is a much better option than the non-pressure balanced constant lubricator. Lastly, the most reliable thing to avoid all kinds of external contamination is the face seal. The use of face seals as per the recommendations for a given rotating equipment can keep the bearing housings absolutely free of all the external contamination.