10 Nov Schultz Specialist: How to Analyze Fluid Quality
The Importance of Fluid Quality
Heat transfer fluid has advantages of high temperature operation with low pressure and accurate control of temperature, widely used in many industries like chemistry, fiber, oil, pharmacy and food making. How to analyze the quality of fluid is crucial to customers. Improper and inferior fluid deteriorates easily due to overheating and oxidation problems, causing carbon deposit stacks, heat transfer efficiency decreasing and energy consumption rising. More serious situations trigger boiler damage, fluid leakage and even fire disaster and casualty. High quality fluid improves production efficiency and protects employees from accidents.
The National Standard
The Chinese national standard of GB 23971-2009 Heat Transfer Fluid sets several rules of detecting fluid quality with the standard testing methods, including fluid appearance, thermal stability, flash point and moisture content. According to the GB 23971-2009 Heat Transfer Fluid, the new developed fluid product shall pass the type tests conducted by China Special Equipment Inspection Institution before marketing. Customers should purchase products with quality certificates.
Fluid Thermal Stability
Fluid thermal stability effects fluid performance significantly. Even with no air, system overheating triggers fluid degradation. Good thermal stability is the essential requirement of high quality product. Fluid degrades into low boilers, high boilers and solids during high temperature operation. Thermal degradation rates of superior fluid stay low with little changes in fluid color, viscosity and flash point. A small amount of fluid is needed every year. However, inferior product deteriorates into dark and thick fluid only after a few months. It is just a couple of years or even months before the end of bad fluid life.
Other Properties
Other properties also influence fluid performance. Kinematic viscosity determines fluid flow condition. Low viscosity fluid has stronger heat transfer performance. Pour point decides fluid mobility. Fluid with low pour point is more suitable for systems built in cold areas. Corrosivity is another indicator effecting fluid quality. Fluid with excessive sulfur and chlorine contents corrodes system valves and pipelines easily, casing fluid leakage accident. Other safety indicators, toxicity and transport security shall comply with GB 23971 requirements.
SCHULTZ® Series Fluids Beyond National Standard
Zhongneng Chemical Technology is committed to developing, manufacturing and marketing SCHULTZ® series fluids. All SCHULTZ® series fluids pass the type tests and the quality is far beyond national standard. Temperature range of SCHULTZ® series fluids is -75℃~400℃, satisfying various customers’ different temperature requirements.