Mechanical Seal Lifecycle
Mechanical Seal Lifecycle
(OP)
Do mechanical seals fail gradually (more and more leaking of fluid as days or months go on) or do they fail abrupptly? Thanks in advance
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Mechanical Seal Lifecycle
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Mechanical Seal LifecycleMechanical Seal Lifecycle(OP)
Do mechanical seals fail gradually (more and more leaking of fluid as days or months go on) or do they fail abrupptly? Thanks in advance
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RE: Mechanical Seal Lifecycle
Mechanical seal leakage is dependant on process fluis they are sealing. Just for your information they do leak between 5 to 10 cc/hr. Seals can operate for many years trouble free and one day start to leak. Leakage could be in the form of drops per minute to a large leak. If they fail abruptly as you put it, something is wrong. It could be a process upset condition, fractured bellows (this is a seal type) bearing failure etc. Depending on the industry to you are in seal life can go from average of 10 years Oil and Gas industry to 3 or 4 months in the mining industry. Do you have a specific application you are trying to assess?
trust this helps
RE: Mechanical Seal Lifecycle
RE: Mechanical Seal Lifecycle
RE: Mechanical Seal Lifecycle
RE: Mechanical Seal Lifecycle
RE: Mechanical Seal Lifecycle
Generally a new seal should leak a little more and the leakage should trend downwards as the seal beds in - ideally to the point where there is no visible leakage. Thereafter if a seal starts to leak a little and this leakage trends upwards then you can be fairly sure of impending failure.
Bear in mind also that there are numerous other factors which can affect seal leakage on a day-to-day basis, so trending needs to be carried out over a long period to smooth out any short term variations.
As has already been said, many seals simply run and run and then suddenly fail, in which case trending is of little or no value. I have seen seals which have run ostensibly leak free for years, then one day just start leaking heavily. On examination I have found that the 'nose' of the carbon has worn away such that a larger face width now comes into play and seal balance changes. This is quite common on clean light hydrocarbons where the seal runs on a marginal film.
By the way, be sure that you collect only the seal leakage and not bearing oil leakage from the flinger, or rainfall! The best way to do this is to install a pipe into the seal drain port, lead it down say 150 mm, then turn through >90 deg (i.e. slightly upwards) for say 100mm then vertically downwards again into a collection bottle or can. This ensures that anything that comes down the outside of the pipe will drip off at the low point and not make it into the collection bottle or can.
RE: Mechanical Seal Lifecycle