Filtration of Lubrication Oil in Railway Applications

Traditional designs, using cartridge filters for full-flow filtration, protect medium speed and high speed diesel engines from wear and keep the concentration of abrasive particles in the oil system down by collecting them out of the circulating oil flow. After several hundred running hours the filtration surface is saturated, the cartridges get exchanged and disposed. State of the art automatic filters protect the engines against wear with the same efficiency as the cartridge filters but the backflushing mechanism keeps the filtration surface clean and the lubrication circuit remains maintenance free. The lifetime of filter elements lasts during time before overhaul (TBO) of the engine itself and is at least 24,000 hrs. The job to discharge the particles out of the system is done by highly efficient centrifugal oil cleaners in by-pass operation which separate not only the particles retained by the automatic filter but also very fine solids like soot. Figure 1 shows an automatic filter in cooperation with two centrifugal oil cleaners build into the silhouette of the engine.