Ignore Your Tap Changer?

And The Results Will Surprise You

The Load Tap Changer (LTC) is a mechanical switching device and is the most expensive and vulnerable accessory of a power transformer. Tap changers cause more failures and outages than any other component of the transformer. They easily account for 40% of all transformer fires and 40-50% of maintenance cost.

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Waste Oil Pits, A Forgotten Ecological Disaster

Waste oil pits like suppurating pustules are scattered throughout the United States.

These open pits are filled with a mixture of tar, oil, water, dirt and debris. They are the product of an industry without conscience, irresponsible, motivated purely by greed. This type of greed and neglect continues to cause casualties and death, long after the oil derricks have gone and its owners have gone on to continue the practice.

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What Methods are Available for Decontaminating Oil

Part three looks at the various industry-standard methods for removing water and contaminants from oil including the coalescer-separator, centrifuge, and vacuum dehydrators.

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Why Must the Oil Be Purified

In part two Heinz Bloch discusses the reasons oil should be purified and what can happen to components when it isn't.

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What Types of Industries Use Circulating Oil Systems

In part one of the Determining Need and Cost Justification for an Oil Purification System series, Heinz Bloch lists several industries that can benefit from oil purification.

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Determining Need and Cost Justification for an Oil Purification System

Determining Need and Cost Justification for an Oil Purification System is a six-part video blog series that shows how a major petrochemcial process plant saved over one half million dollars by implement an oil analysis and decontamination program utilizing an oil purification system such as the Allen Oil Conditioner. This introduction outlines the six segments in the series and gives background on Heinz P. Bloch, a licensed consulting engineer and presenter of the series.

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Quench Oil Fundamentals

Quench oil serves two primary functions: 1) it facilitates hardening of steel during quenching, and 2) it enhances wetting of steel during quenching to minimize the formation of undesirable thermal and transformational gradients, which may lead to distortion or cracking.

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Recommended Properties of New Transformer Oil

The main function of transformer oil is insulating and cooling of the transformer.

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Metal Working Fluids: How to Keep Them From Making You Sick

Metal working fluids (MWF) are fluids used during machining and grinding to prolong the life of the tool and protect the working surfaces of the work pieces. Workers are exposed to MWFs by inhaling mists and by skin contact with the fluid. Skin contact occurs by dipping the hands in the fluid, splashing, or handling the work pieces coated in the fluid. A substantial amount of scientific evidence indicates that workers routinely exposed to MWF mists have an increased risk of respiratory and skin diseases.

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EHC Fluids: Myth and Reality

EHC fluid is expensive, so it makes sense to keep the fluid in the best possible condition. This does not always work out to be the case. EHC fluid is used in steam turbine control systems that govern, among other things, the operation of a trip-throttle valve. This valve shuts of the steam supply to the turbine in case of a threat of over speed.

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Optimizing the Biodiesel Process, Part 1: The Bioscav

"We are running out of oil!" Heard it before, have you? Well look at it this way; we are already close to running out of the light, sweet crude oil that was easy to find. Now we have to go further out into deeper waters to greater depth to find crude oil that is of lower quality, heavily contaminated, and more expensive to get and to process. Power generating turbines are now being designed to burn this nasty crude.

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Sustainable Electric Power for Emerging Markets, Part 1

Many developing countries experience either a lack of dependable power or suffer through countless periods of blackouts. The reasons vary from vandalism to theft of insulating oil, but stem most often from poor or non-existent maintenance and security of the existing power grid. The consequence is often the complete destruction of transformers. A comprehensive maintenance and security program for transformers can prevent this.

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Transformer Manufacturing Optimized

The Allen AOC Series Oil Conditioner is a vacuum distillation system that is used by several major manufacturers during the last phase of the building or repair of large power transformers, the testing phase.

In this part of the process, the Allen Oil Conditioner fulfills the multiple tasks that consist of moving large quantities of test oil from the test oil tank to the new transformer and, after completion of the test, return the oil to the test oil tank. This allows the same batch of oil to be used almost indefinitely because the Allen Oil Conditioner keeps purifying the oil throughout this process.

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Is Your EHC Fluid Dry?

One of the main reasons we use phosphate ester fluid such as Fyrquel™ is its fire-resistant properties, such as the fact that it is self-extinguishing. For this reason it is often used in the hydraulic control system of steam turbines. This control system governs the rotational speed of the turbine and problems in the hydraulic fluid that could cause the turbine to overspeed and destroy itself.

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The Magic Media, Part 1: Cellulose

Cellulose is the common material of plant cell walls. It occurs in almost pure form in cotton fiber and in combination with other materials such as lignin and hemi-cellulose, wood, and plant leaves and stalks. Cellulose is a long-chain molecule (polymer) made up of recurring units of glucose, a simple sugar.

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Adsorbing Contaminants From Used Frying Oil

Deep fat frying is a processing procedure used world-wide for the preparation and production of foods. During the deep frying process oil is subjected to high temperatures, air, and moisture. These conditions cause a variety of degradation reactions to occur such as thermal polymerization, auto-oxidation isomer cyclization, and hydrolysis.

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Can Reusing Frying Oil Be Dangerous To Your Health?

French fries are one of our favorite foods. We consume billions of pounds of them. They are good, they are salty, and they can be dangerous. Dangerous because of the widespread practice in many restaurants and fast food places to reuse frying oil.

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How to Control Microorganisms in Diesel Fuel

Microbes in petrodiesel and biodiesel products can mean serious problems. They can cause product deterioration, sludge formation, and corrosion of tanks and pipework. The fuel that presents the most serious problems in terms of microbiological growth is diesel fuel, whether it is petro-diesel or worse, biodiesel. Conditions in diesel fuel storage containers are ideal for significant and rapid growth. Biodiesel is subject to even more microbial contamination than petrodiesel.

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How We Apply Vacuum Distillation in Fluid Purification

Distillation is the process used for separating multi-component fluids into high purity products. A designer is required to have a thorough understanding of mass transfer, phase change, and pressure-drop fundamentals before he or she can successfully optimize the process design. Most engineers rely heavily on vendor recommendations, thereby absolving themselves of the fundamental function of the creative application of the basic principles of chemical engineering.

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Regeneration of Fuller's Earth: Does It Make Sense?

Fuller's earth is a general term for industrially used smectite or polygorskite-sepiolite clays with a large surface area and strong absorptive, binding, gelling, thickening, and decolorizing ability.

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