Romax services record number of main bearings using novel grease flushing process

Romax has reaffirmed its commitment to improving wind turbine reliability, following the news that it has doubled the size of its main bearing grease flushing business across its customer portfolio over the past 12 months.

The grease flushing process is highly effective at removing contaminated grease and debris from within a wind turbine’s main bearing. Main bearing reliability has been a major problem for many operators globally. As the bearing wears, metallic particles are released into the grease and in doing so it then accelerates damage, significantly reducing the bearing’s life. Repairs are extremely costly and generally involve large crane operations to remove the turbine rotor.

To counter this and extend main bearing life, Romax use a unique process and specially developed patent-pending apparatus for grease flushing, designed to significantly increase a turbine’s life, reducing the cost of operation & maintenance, and extending costly service intervals.

Romax has performed grease-flushing services globally across five countries, expanding the size of the team involved in this process, with bespoke flushing equipment developed for specific turbines.

Ashley Crowther, Global VP – Romax InSight, said: “It has once again been a highly successful period at Romax. Turbines continue to face issues, and manufacturers are always looking for solutions to improve durability and performance.  For a long time we have been modelling bearing life and designing for long life, however, for operating assets a computer model by itself doesn’t increase the life – a good engineering solution is needed.  What we offer manufacturers are solutions that give turbines the capability to increase their life span and significantly reduce the challenges and costs associated with turbine maintenance.

“Bearing grease flushing is something that is proving highly effective in addressing this. It’s a challenging task to conduct and do thoroughly, but with our process you can remove and replace all the grease, reducing damage to the turbine, all while increasing life and reducing cost. This has proven highly beneficial to wind farm owners,” he concludes.

As part of its commitment to driving wind efficiency, Romax was awarded a grant of £129,000 as part of the GROW: Offshore Wind programme, supported by the UK government’s Regional Growth Fund (RGF). The aim of this is to develop, create, and safeguard jobs within the wind farm industry, with Romax focusing on commercialising technology for bearing grease flushing.

Find out how we helped a US wind farm improve turbine reliability using our grease flushing service >>