The wind industry makes an important contribution to the energy turnaround and to a future-oriented power supply. To have a secure future themselves, wind turbines must be economical. This requires reliable and continuous operation even under adverse weather conditions. At the gearbox, a gear train converts the kinetic energy of the wind into mechanical energy, which sets the turbine in motion in the electricity generator. The heart of the wind turbine can only run at full speed if the gear oil is filtered to at least 10 µm.
In gear oil filtration, the oil used has a viscosity of 320 cSt (at 40 °C) and must still be reliably filtered at -7 °C with a viscosity of 10,000 cSt. The pump must be selected according to the requirements. Temperature differences and vibrations must be taken into account accordingly for long-term use of the system of approx. 20 years.
Filtration Group Industrial’s customer’s request was to mount the filter-cooler-pump system for gear oil filtration as compactly as possible on the wind turbine gearbox.
The filter system needs to fit onto an area defined by the customer. The pump shall be placed directly in the oil sump, so it can be heated with the existing oil heater. Objective of the development was to save as much material, weight and room as possible, without the need to dispense with a reliable performance of the filter system.
The advantage of this modular, directly connected filter concept is, that thanks to the omission of the external piping the required space and the possibility of leaking have been reduced to a minimum. Furthermore this system can be retrofitted with a metal particle sensor because of the flexibility on the mounting plate.
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