Gravity-purification in your hydraulic tank (or perhaps better,... on the shelf)

[Kenduro]

OR you could store the fluid in a vessel with a bottom drain and valve so you could drain it off before reusing the fluid. Kind of like the liquid separator your wife uses in the kitchen.

 

[RayIN]

I replaced the hyd. oil in my tractor last month. The very cloudy oil has sat in 5G pails ever since. It's still just as cloudy as the day it was drained from the tractor.
All oils wear out, the long chain molecules get sheared apart by use, that's why synthetic oil lasts longer, it's chemistry is much different.
Save $200 by re-using old oil in a $14,000+ tractor.?
Would you do that with motor oil too?

 

[m5040]

I hang a magnet from the hyd tank filler cap down below the oil level, but not on the bottom. My machine requires a 50 hr filter change so I have to check top off oil level and I clean the magnet. Here is what the towel looks like (pic attached). You can decide if it is worth the trouble on your machine.

 

[Sodo]

I replaced the hyd. oil in my tractor last month. The very cloudy oil has sat in 5G pails ever since. It's still just as cloudy as the day it was drained from the tractor.
All oils wear out, the long chain molecules get sheared apart by use, that's why synthetic oil lasts longer, it's chemistry is much different.
Save $200 by re-using old oil in a $14,000+ tractor.?
Would you do that with motor oil too?

Ray, engine oil is subject to different set of contaminants, including chemical. Hydr oil gets mostly stone & metal contaminants. Which are both heavier than oil, and will settle out. Which is something you "can" do if you want. You cannot (easily) remove chemical contaminants that engine oil accumulates. But settling oil is one of the easier tasks around. Gravity does it for you, on a shelf while you watch TV (for months). Anyway, metal and stone removal is no ifs ands or buts "better" than running the same used oil longer.

I would be real surprised if someone put effort into removing the metal and stone contaminants from engine oil, and re-used it. But if someone did,,,,,, that re-used oil, cleaned of metal& stone is significantly better than similar used oil that that you may be running currently. So there's that....

One month is too soon to observe clarity (if it will happen). Six months is more reasonable for a visible clarification.

As for oil wearing out, chains being cut etc. I have no knowledge on when that amounts to be the significant detriment. Whereas heavier than oil contaminant removal is beneficial "for certain".

 

[Sodo]

I hang a magnet from the hyd tank filler cap down below the oil level, but not on the bottom. My machine requires a 50 hr filter change so I have to check top off oil level and I clean the magnet. Here is what the towel looks like (pic attached). You can decide if it is worth the trouble on your machine.

Hanging a magnet is vastly different than arranging lots of magnets on the floor (for example).

Magnets cannot pull tiny particles from the fluid from all directions. It catches only the particles dropping past very slowly, vertically downward from above (while the oil is still).

Your method is a worthy observation. If you saw flakes, you would "know" something! Seeing only the black dust is "no news is good news".

But for catching and sequestering the black dust to never re-circulate, it makes more sense (to me) to create a large "quiet area' on the bottom (of a flat reservoir). Which is their ultimate destination anyway. Just setup the conditions to "hold" them there so they cannot be re-stirred, recirculated.

Who cares if you carry the trash around everywhere you go for the whole 1,000 hour interval? If they're out out of the fluid flow, --->that's your benefit.

This would be easy to make, and the effort minimal, in my mini-ex which has a flat bottom rectangular reservoir. I don't know how to get this benefit on the tractor which is a cast shape with no access cover.

 

[RayIN]

Ray, engine oil is subject to different set of contaminants, including chemical. Hydr oil gets mostly stone & metal contaminants. Which are both heavier than oil, and will settle out. Which is something you "can" do if you want. You cannot (easily) remove chemical contaminants that engine oil accumulates. But settling oil is one of the easier tasks around. Gravity does it for you, on a shelf while you watch TV (for months). Anyway, metal and stone removal is no ifs ands or buts "better" than running the same used oil longer.

I would be real surprised if someone put effort into removing the metal and stone contaminants from engine oil, and re-used it. But if someone did,,,,,, that re-used oil, cleaned of metal& stone is significantly better than similar used oil that that you may be running currently. So there's that....

One month is too soon to observe clarity (if it will happen). Six months is more reasonable for a visible clarification.

As for oil wearing out, chains being cut etc. I have no knowledge on when that amounts to be the significant detriment. Whereas heavier than oil contaminant removal is beneficial "for certain".

You must'a skipped over the first sentence.

 

[90cummins]

You are right that filtration by settling is the very best type of filtration. It is widely used for removing things from solution that are too small for filters with pores to handle. Great for separating fine particles held in solution for everything from dyes to pharmaceuticals. Handy for analytics, too, since settlement mateiral naturally stratifies as it settles.
Centrifuging anything is the same as natural settlement, just faster.

The brewing industry uses natural settlement in vats and the siphoning to remove yeast from beer before bottling.

Downside to magnets used as you describe is that trapped ferromagnetic particles line up to follow the magnetic field which "short circuits" the magnetic field and makes its effect less far reaching. An old trick to get around that and also get rid of ferromagnetic particles is to put your neo magnets onto the outside of the disposable filter cannister. - which is made of thin steel. Win/win.

Another way to use pore filtration is to direct part of the flow through a by-pass fllter with a very small pore size. Hi performance pumps and engines often direct a few percent of the flow through a sub-micron filter. Over time, that really makes a difference.
Bypass filters have been around for 100 years. Was popular with planes in WWII. And with cars in the 1950s. There is no downside to them. You can buy a complete bypass filtration kit on Amazon for very reasonable.

Which reminds me that Kubotas with the "HSTplus" transmission have an additional replaceable bypass filter for superfiltration. That system not only super filters the HST oil 100%, over time it does the same for all the trans/hydraulic oil. That filter is specially built and about $75 to replace - maybe the high price is because sub 2 micron media is special, and also the filter body is a pressure type rather than a suction fllter.
Just me rambling,
rScotty

The drawback to being on the outside is if they are removed the particles trapped on the inside are released in bulk into the system.
Having said that I’ve mounted some on the outside but secured them in place.