Fluitec International, LLC

10/14/2026

Oil analysis alone may not tell you a bearing is varnishing. Its temperature trace might.

In tilting pad journal and equalized (Kingsbury style) thrust bearings, varnish forms where the oil film is thinnest. That shrinks clearance, raises pressure on the film, and lowers load carrying capacity and critical speed. Shear-stress deposits, created by localized degradation at microscopic interfaces, can slip past traditional MPC analysis.

The evidence in the paper: in a centrifugal compressor case study (Shin et al., 2025), four years of varnish buildup drove rotor vibration up 300%, from 6 to 18 µm (0.24 to 0.71 mil). Replacing the oil and removing the varnish restored normal levels. In the field, bearing temperature showed a sawtooth pattern of rapid spikes and gradual cooling, with excursions of 7 to 17 °C (13 to 31 °F) above baseline.

In thermohydrodynamic modeling (Jang et al., 2024), varnish at just 20% of bearing clearance cut minimum film thickness, lowered critical speed by up to 17%, and pushed pressure to as high as 8.9 MPa (1,290 psi) and temperature past 112 °C (234 °F). For reference, typical alarms sit at 110 °C (230 °F), trip at 120 °C (248 °F), and babbitt begins to creep around 132 °C (270 °F).

The takeaway: pair temperature trending with viscosity, MPC and FTIR results and vibration monitoring. No single signal proves varnish, but together they can flag it early.

Read the whitepaper: "Correlation between Lube Oil Condition & Bearing Temperatures" by Greg Livingstone and Sanya Mathura
https://zurl.co/R78Ra

10/12/2026

The oil in your heat transfer system is hotter than your gauge says it is.

At the pipe wall, film temperature typically runs 14 to 28 °C (25 to 50 °F) above bulk oil temperature, and more than 40 °C (72 °F) above it if flow drops. Two pathways degrade the fluid there: oxidation forms acidic byproducts and sludge, and thermal cracking breaks molecules into volatile light ends and tar-like polymers.

They leave different fingerprints. With cracking, viscosity and flash point fall, acid number is unchanged and Conradson carbon residue rises. With oxidation, viscosity and acid number rise, flash point holds and insolubles increase.

The deposits (sludge, varnish, and coke, the hard, carbon-rich one) act as insulation. More energy is needed for the same heat exchange, pumps can no longer reach the required pressure, and fouled systems often need a shutdown for cleaning.

Online treatment is hard too: the chemical filtration used on other lubricants isn't suited to these temperatures, and detergent-based cleaners can cause rapid deposit accumulation and lower flash points.

The paper looks at DECON™, a fully synthetic API Group V oil-soluble cleaner from the SOLVANCER® range, designed to be added to in-service oil to dissolve deposits and limit new ones.

Read the whitepaper: "Improving production of heat transfer fluid systems with solvency enhancers" by Jo Ameye and Greg Livingstone
https://zurl.co/Id9fw

10/12/2026

From Jakarta to Singapore: growing Mobil™ SOLVANCER® across Asia 🌏

The Fluitec team continued their Asia tour with visits to ExxonMobil and Mobil distributor teams in Indonesia and Singapore.

They held a Business Review at the ExxonMobil Indonesia office in Jakarta and ran a training session for the team. They shared a Mobil™ SOLVANCER® case study from the Pulp & Paper industry. More than 20 people from Sales, Marketing and Technical joined, in person and online.

At Brenntag Jakarta, they met the Sales and Technical teams and ran a training session. They talked through varnish issues our current customers are facing and looked at new opportunities, especially in Power Generation.

They finished in Singapore with a Business Review alongside the SAP team, looking at strategy and execution for Mobil™ SOLVANCER® across the Asia region.

Thank you to the ExxonMobil Indonesia and Singapore teams and to Brenntag Jakarta for your time, your questions and your hospitality. Each conversation made it clearer that varnish is a shared challenge across many industries, and we’re excited to keep working together to solve it.

Juan José Salaberri, Lars van Dijk, Paul Ingram, Eric Puah, Guangjie Zheng

10/09/2026

Can 1% really make a difference?
Yes, it actually doubled the life of an oil in an offshore gas turbine in Qatar!

Petrotec worked alongside one of their offshore customers who was experiencing a decline in the antioxidants of the oil for one of their gas turbines. They wanted to extend the life of the oil and not change it.

DECON™ AO was added at a 1% treat rate and has been in the system for the past year with increased RUL values as well as lowered MPC values.

Find out more in this case study:
https://zurl.co/W2WE7

Thank you to the team for adding value to this customer, Vanda Franco, Noel Menezes, Guillaume Kalfon, Jo Ameye

One 1% addition of DECON™AO, no oil change, and resultsstill holding after 14 months an Offshore Solar Mars Gas Turbine in Qatar.

10/07/2026

A turbine that runs one week in four isn't "lightly used". For its oil, it may be the hardest duty cycle there is.

Peakers, spare compressors and standby pumps now cycle weekly or monthly, and the oil circulates through the whole system on every run. That is not continuous duty and not layup, and the oil wasn't formulated for it. Modern Group II turbine oils have lower solvency for oxidation byproducts than the Group I oils they replaced, and varnish becomes insoluble somewhere between 40 and 50 °C (104 to 122 °F).

A system that cycles weekly spends most of its time below that, so precursors drop out onto cooler tubes, servo valve spools, bearing pads and gear meshes. Each startup then burns antioxidant locally against what has accumulated. The paper's warning: an oil rated for 5 to 10 years of continuous service can produce varnish in 2 to 3 years of intermittent service, and routine oil analysis, designed for another duty cycle, may not see it coming.

The alternative is single-charge maintenance: replenish antioxidants (restoring RULER® values), keep oxidation byproducts in solution with SOLVANCER® technology, and use one fluid for running and idle periods.

DECON™ AO does both at 3 to 5% treat rates, with compatibility confirmed by simulation testing on the actual oil first. Sample after every run, trend RULER, MPC and RPVOT together, and act when aminic antioxidants fall below 50% of baseline (condemn below 25%) or MPC exceeds 15.

In the case examples, treated units at Salt River Project's Mesquite Power facility held single-digit MPC values, and at a Qatar power plant, VITA ESP III and DECON AO were used to reduce the risk of six turbines shutting down and a costly 120,000 L (about 31,700 gal) oil replacement.

Read the whitepaper: "Protecting Lubricants in Standby and Intermittent Service" by Vanda Franco and Greg Livingstone
https://zurl.co/4wdqi

10/06/2026

What a great week with the Mobil team in China 🇨🇳

JJ and Roger recently spent time with ExxonMobil China and two Mobil distributors, sharing how Mobil™ Solvancer® technology is helping customers deal with varnish.

We were invited to join the Advanced technology Workshop with the Mobil China Market Engineering Team. We ran a training session and walked through several China market case studies on Mobil™ Solvancer®. We also looked at how it can strengthen the Mobil offer in sectors where customers are dealing with varnish.

We also met with Mobil distributors to talk about case studies and the impact of Mobil™ Solvancer® for solving their challenges.

Thank you to all the teams involved, and both distributor teams for the open discussions and warm hospitality.

It's clear there is strong interest in solving varnish problems at the source, and we look forward to what's next together.

Shanghai Handswin Electrical and Mechanical Co Ltd
Shanghai Lakai Lubes Co., Ltd.
Hangzhou Zuosen Petrochemical Co., Ltd.

Mobil South Asia Pacific, Juan José Salaberri, Guangjie Zheng

10/05/2026

Twenty-five years into studying varnish, we've solved most of the problem. Here's the piece that's still open.

Since MPC testing (ASTM D7843) standardized varnish measurement in 2012, the field has moved from filtration to ion-exchange resins to solubility enhancers, and we now recognize several distinct degradation pathways: micro-dieseling, electrostatic discharge, thermolysis and shear-stress deposits.

Modeling shows varnish filling just 20% of bearing clearance can cut minimum oil-film thickness in half, raise peak pressure 5 to 8 times and push bearing surface temperature up by 28 °C (50 °F).

What we still can't explain: why identical units in the same fleet vary so widely in how much varnish they form, or where deposits will land in new equipment.

MPC also misses shear-stress deposits entirely.

Hydraulic systems, running similar chemistry under harsher conditions, remain largely unstudied.

Greg Livingstone, Jo Ameye and Sanya Mathura go through 25 years of findings in Machinery Lubrication:
https://zurl.co/xWICd

09/30/2026

The fastest-growing fluid market in our industry right now has nothing to do with turbines or gearboxes. It's servers, submerged in dielectric fluid.

Data centers already consume 1 to 2% of global electricity, and up to 40% of that goes to cooling alone, so immersion cooling is scaling fast: the single-phase segment is projected to grow from roughly $190M in 2025 to $840M+ by 2032.

These fluids run 24/7 at 40 to 70 °C (104 to 158 °F) with no shutdown cycles, and success is judged on heat removal and dielectric strength rather than the friction and wear metrics lubrication engineers are trained on.

PFAS regulatory pressure has also pushed the market toward synthetic hydrocarbons, esters and bio-oils since 3M exited PFAS manufacturing in 2022.

The contamination control, material compatibility and fluid analysis skills that built our field translate directly. This is a new application, not a new discipline.

Greg Livingstone and Hamed Eksiri unpack the shift in Precision Lubrication:
https://zurl.co/Kbaqk

09/28/2026

A plant once tried to fix a foaming problem with a silicone antifoam additive. It made the actual risk worse, not better.

Foam and entrained air are not the same failure mode, and treating one like the other is how that happens.

Foam is mechanical (agitation, poor reservoir design, high viscosity) or chemical (moisture, oxidation byproducts, contaminants acting as nucleation sites) in origin, and it's measured against three different standards: ASTM D892, ASTM D6082 and the ISO 12152 Flender Foam Test.

Silicone-based (PDMS) antifoams knock down foam fast but degrade air release and filter out of the system.

Polyacrylate alternatives hold up better on both counts.

As guidance from the German utility industry put it as far back as 1982: silicone additives suppress foaming, but caution is advised, since they often work against air release.

Full diagnostic walkthrough:
https://zurl.co/RFWTk