All hydraulic systems leak at some time within their life span.
Potential contamination to firstly and most importantly the person using or maintaining the system must be assessed.
Secondly the risk to the product or service in which the system is adopted and thirdly the environment in which it is used must be taken into account.
Make a risk assessment for your product containing oil against the same system driven by water and view the impact to people, product and environment.
The improvement will ensure your product is viewed as a market leader with better industrial health compliance also reducing environmental liability and risk.
Your customer may benefit from lower insurance costs by demonstrating proof of good management before pollution incidents occur.
Systems operating in high fire risk areas can not adopt standard oil systems.
The non flammable hydraulic alternatives are usually highly toxic.Water offers neither a fire risk or a toxic threat, insurance premiums may be reduced by adopting such a system
Individual components offer the same and in some cases improved performance to that of a comparable oil unit.
The transmission of fluid however offers greater efficiency improvements thereby reducing the size of components and absorbed power for a given output. The virtual incompressibility of water also offers excellent controllability with rapid response.
The cost of the fluid is not the only major saving to be gained from adopting a water system.
Assessment of meeting new stringent regulations regarding storage, cleaning of spillages, special protective clothing for users, material handing of bulk fluids, meeting manufacturers specific fluid demands and adhering to disposal legislation must be undertaken. Logistics and management time for all of the points is removed when the hydraulic fluid is taken from the tap and disposed of down any domestic drain.
Companies in the past have given lip service to environmental issues.
The new ISO 14000 international standard was to prevent violations, fines, and negative publicity for non complying companies.
On the positive side it also assists companies who produce enviro friendly products and assists them to profit in the market for “green” products.
THERE IS NO GREENER DRIVE OPTION THAN WATER
The power centre combines the operation of an axial piston high pressure desalination pump with an axial piston motor utilising the pressure in the waste brine to assist the electric motor in driving the pump and so reducing the power requirement to typically less than 3 kW/m³ of permeate. The power centre has been purpose designed and built for the RO market.
Due to the integrated nature of the power centre design the footprint is much reduced nor is there the need for all the additional fluid couplings which makes for a very compact system ideal for ships and offshore platforms. Reduced complexity of the system components and hence cost