The screw air compressor is flooded and the machine head is rusted and stuck! What should I do?

We always encounter users of screw air compressors complaining about water accumulation in the compressor head on various forums and platforms. Some of these complaints even occur on new machines that have just been used for more than a hundred hours, causing the compressor head to rust or even become stuck and scrapped, resulting in huge losses.

First of all, we need to figure out why water accumulates in the oil-injected screw air compressor:

Definition of dew point: Under a fixed air pressure, the temperature to which the gaseous water in the air needs to drop to reach saturation and condense into liquid water.

1.The atmosphere contains water vapor, which is what we usually call humidity. This water will enter the screw air compressor along with the atmosphere.

2.When the screw air compressor is running, the dew point of the compressed air will decrease as the pressure increases, but at the same time, the compression process will also generate a lot of compression heat. The oil temperature of the compressor in normal operation is designed to be above 80℃, so that the compression heat makes the water in the air evaporate into gas and be discharged to the rear end with the compressed air.

3.If the air compressor is too large, or the user's gas consumption is very small, the screw compressor's operating load rate is seriously low, which will cause the oil temperature to fail to reach above 80°C for a long time, or even below the dew point. At this time, the moisture in the compressed air will condense into liquid and remain inside the air compressor, mixing with the lubricating oil. At this time, the oil filter and oil separator will increase the load and fail quickly. In severe cases, the oil will deteriorate and emulsify, causing the main engine rotor to rust and jam.

Solution

1.  When selecting equipment, be sure to ask professionals to choose an air compressor unit with appropriate power.

2.When the air consumption is low or the weather is humid, drain the condensed water in the oil and gas barrel after the screw machine is shut down for 6 hours until the oil is seen flowing out. (It needs to be drained regularly, and the frequency of draining depends on the use environment of the screw machine).

3.For air-cooled units, the fan temperature switch and heat dissipation can be adjusted appropriately to raise the oil temperature; for water-cooled units, the cooling water inlet can be adjusted appropriately to ensure the oil temperature of the air compressor. For variable frequency units, the minimum operating frequency can be appropriately increased to increase the machine speed and increase the operating load.

4.For users with particularly low gas consumption, it is recommended to discharge the pressure of the back-end gas storage tank regularly to artificially increase the machine operating load.

5.Use genuine lubricating oil, which has good oil-water separation and is not easy to emulsify. Check the oil level before starting the machine each time to see if there is any abnormal rise or oil emulsification.