CLIENT STORY

Sponge iron plant realized ~15% annual direct cost savings and 50% lesser wear defects by switching to Molygraph grease

3 min read | 30 May 2023

Overview

A sponge iron plant in eastern India was spending heavily on greasing critical support bearings on the kilns. But still faced premature failure of bearings leading to high repair costs and unplanned shutdowns. Molygraph’s application experts recommended SG 1000 M 50 grease that provided superior lubrication, better reliability, longer component life and enabled ~15% direct cost saving on grease with 50% lesser wear defects

Customer pain/ challenge

The plant has 3 nos 100 TPD kilns, each fitted with 8 nos support bearings which are critical for the reliable operation. These bearings were grease guzzlers and yet faced premature failures. The customer wanted to improve on the bearing reliability and also control heavy expenditure on greasing.

Solution

Molygraph’s application experts studied the requirement and recommended Molygraph’s SG 1000 M 50 grease. Even though the per Kg price of this grease was higher than customer’s conventional grease, Molygraph promised lesser life cycle cost with longer lube change interval and enhanced reliability due to high performance specifications of this grease.

Customer benefits

While the customer's conventional grease needed 4 top-ups during the campaign period of 60 days, Molygraph’s SG 1000 M 50 grease brought it down by 50%. At the end of the campaign the conventional grease would have needed full re-greasing, but customer observed that even after 3 campaigns the strength of Molygraph’s SG 1000 M 50 grease was good and only 30-35% grease in the outer casing of the bearing needed to be replenished.

The customer also reported smoother operation of the bearings with reduced noise levels and 50% lesser bearing wear/ defects. There were no scoring marks, scratchings, burning marks on the bearing observed at the end of each campaign.

Result