Seal Oil Level Increase

It sounds as though some water is getting into your oil as a result of air compression and cooling, Captain. Are you sure the seals are correctly reassembled? Are you sure the condensate water disposal pipework is running freely?

we have checked and drained and cleaned all the pipings before we start.

although we did not face this issue during oil flushing.

also, i don't think it's possible for the cooling water to get there because of the pressure difference.

No, not the cooling water. The water that is produced when the air is compressed and cooled, Captain. Is that not getting away?

Welcome no0o0,

Not enough information, but if I understand you correctly, you have;

• a compressor with liquid (floating) ring seals . Do you recover your sour seal (process gas side) oil or does it go to waste?
• separate seal oil and lube oil systems
• your seal oil level is increasing
• at the same time your lube oil system level is decreasing (but not by as much as the seal oil is increasing)
• you are transferring oil from seal oil reservoir to lube oil reservoir to correct the level

First a safety concern. I do not know what you are compressing, but the fact that you have separate systems would indicate that it is a hydrocarbon and probably quite light. Please ensure that you take the flash point of your seal oil before transferring it to your lube oil tank.

There are only a few paths available where you can transfer oil from one system to another and they all (mostly) require leakage across a labyrinth seal of some sort. Remember that all the return lines are at somewhere around atmospheric pressure, so any small differences (mm WG) in pressures can cause problems. For this reason you need to look at the reservoir vents, sour seal oil drains, nitrogen blanketing pressures to reservoirs, air or nitrogen purges/buffer gases to separation labyrinths, etc etc.

Look at the P&ID of the oils systems and systematically rule out each possible leakage path. You can not make oil in the system so what one is gaining has to come from the other or you are adding from another source.

Tell us more about the system and we can be more specific.

Did u take sample from the resrvior and sent to the lab to check if it is only the seal oil before the overhaul? or seal + lube or seal +the liquid pumped, or.. etc

was the temp of the seal oil roughly constant or increase too much?