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  • 1.  Reclaiming and reusing hydraulic oil

    Posted 03-07-2025 07:31 AM

    Can anyone provide any experience or guidance with reclaiming and reusing hydraulic oil for industrial equipment?

    Thanks,

    Fiona P

    Reliability Engineer



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    Fiona Piercy
    Reliability Specialist
    Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
    Akron OH
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  • 2.  RE: Reclaiming and reusing hydraulic oil

    Posted 03-10-2025 06:55 AM

    I'd say the first step would be to pull a sample and drop it off at Testoil over in Strongsville. They will be a great resource for you to consult with. They can tell you the condition of the oil itself (is it oxidized, are there chemical contaminants, are the appropriate additives present, etc.), so you know whether it's worth reclaiming. They can also tell you if there's water that will have to be removed, and they will tell you how much particulate contamination is present. Usually you can hook up a filter cart to your storage drums/totes, with a desiccant filter and a particulate filter installed, and run it as long as you need to to get the oil cleaned up. 



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    Dale Nicholson, PE, CMRP, CRL
    Reliability Engineering Mgr
    Evonik Corp
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Reclaiming and reusing hydraulic oil

    Posted 03-11-2025 06:37 AM

    I currently use reclaimed oil in machinery and have done so in 3 different industries with success. The key factors I feel are a robust oil sampling program and then using a oil reclamation company that provides detailed testing reports prior to and at the completion of the oil purification process. Our oil costs are down approximately 60%, we collect oil and reclaim it and then augment our usage with virgin bulk oil purchases, and we have had no significant increase in valve or pump failures. We sample our oil regularly in all of our hydraulic systems, we have a well established PM program for maintaining good oil filtration on the presses and we are proactive when our oil temps start to elevate.



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    Andrew McElrath
    Corporate Maintenance Manager
    HC Companies
    Newton Falls OH
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Reclaiming and reusing hydraulic oil

    Posted 03-11-2025 08:19 AM

    Oil Filtration Systems vacuum dehydration and filtration is the key to purifying hydraulic oil for reuse. This is a complete system that will take oil from ISO counts > 22/21/20 with water >2,000 ppm down to 16/14/12 with water <200 ppm. Water is very detrimental to have in hydraulic oil.



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    Kuarlal Rampersad
    Maintenance and Reliability Engineering Consultant.
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Reclaiming and reusing hydraulic oil

    Posted 03-12-2025 09:04 AM

    One additional item I'll throw in here is that while I think it is possible to reclaim oils, note that the process for cleaning it up and filtering may remove some of the beneficial additives originally in the oil alongside removing contaminants. We had an event a few years ago where we were inadvertently filtering out the anti-foaming agent on a particular oil because the filter size (5 micron) was too fine for the AF agent to pass through. Because so many of the additive packages are proprietary it may not be possible to verify that all of the additives originally in the oil are still there after reclamation.

    With this in mind, my suggestion would be to start small and once you verify the reclaimed oil works as well as new in a particular machine, expand it out to more machines. 



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    Matthew Hiatt
    Hydrocarbons Senior Reliability Manager
    Dow Chemical
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    Original Message


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