Sometimes

By powerplanter

Lube oile generator

A lube oil generator... strange name for just a small generator.
It's at the end of the shaftline, and the purpose of it is to generate power to drive the main lube oil pump which is located elswhere in the unit.
That pump provides lubricating oil to the bearings of the shaftline (Gasturbine, steamturbine and main generator, all on one shaft).
When power supply fails and the unit has no more auxiliary power supply anymore, the oilsupply to the bearing is stil mainained by this generator.
(because te shaft is still running at 3000 rpm)
At startup we use a normal pump, which gets it's supply from the auxiliary grid.

Reason for this Blip: this generator has ball bearings; and the end bearing was making strange noise, so we decided to pump a very tiny bit of grease in the bearing.
We were watching as the temperature of the bearing went down and the rumbling noise stopped... (a few years ago we did the same at an other unit and the temperature went skyhigh... we had to stop the unit then and changed the lube oil generator).

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