Operating principle of air oil separator
Most of the oil is separated by centrifugal force. The air oil mixture enters the separator container at a certain angle, so most of the oil is pushed outside and falls into the oil container. Generally, splash shields are installed to prevent the air oil mixture from directly impacting the separator filter, and 85% of the oil is separated in this way. The remaining 15% compressed air exists in the form of small droplets and fog. When these oily compressed air flows through the separator filter, small droplets merge to form large droplets until they fall to the bottom of the separator filter and collect, and then these oils are sucked in and discharged through the scavenge line.
When you have an oil carrying problem and suspect an oil separator, perform a basic inspection
1. If there is a large amount of oil in the oil separator, the oil return pipe is faulty.
2. If the oil level at the bottom of the filter element is higher than 5cm, it indicates that the separator is saturated, which means that the filter medium is full of oil.
3. If the separator feels heavy, looks dark and saturated from bottom to top, it is really time to replace the oil separator.
This can only be measured when the compressor is running under load, the differential pressure can be checked and should not exceed 0.2 to 0.3 bar under load.
The above points can only be checked when the oil separator is removed from the separator vessel.
