Fix THIS! How is this possible?!

This is what happens to an electric fan motor that runs in the marine mining industry on a ventilation fan.

This fan runs constantly without rest for around 3 years with very little maintenance until it either breaks or the ship comes in for a service.

Hey there, Zak here from Cape Town, South Africa and I am mostly at work for extended hours. Generally 12-13 hours on site at the moment.

So I do not have MUCH more to blog about except work... and my reviews... perhaps I can stick some fiction in the queue as well..

Anyway... back to the engineering!

Another reason for the advanced corrosion on this vessel is the rust on other parts of the same plant.

Rust is like a disease, or if we want to break oxidation down into its base chemical process - rusting metal is like wood burning. Instead of a flame and wood turning into charcoal and ash, the metal is oxidizing and the chemical process turns the metal alloys into an oxide.

The chemical formula of iron rust is Fe2O3. So it is purely oxidized iron.

Charcoal is Carbon as a solid and Oxygen as a gas, this then would produce carbon dioxide as a by-product. So C (s) + O2 (g) → CO2 (g)

And what this means is that rust is a run-away chemical reaction that can spread from one place to another. Rust on this vessel is ground into a powder and it gets in everywhere along with stone grit from the constant crushing of the aggregate that the mining vessel dredges up.

So it is really a perfect abrasive to scratch open any protective paint or coating and start the oxidizing process.

Other equipment look similar and need to be stripped out to be sampled for replacements.

Look at that those fan blades...

A thick coating of rust.

This is the other side of that fan with its bearing. There was a thick smear of grease on this shaft and that might have saved it from a lot of the rust.

However, there are important components that simply have been so rusted through that this is not just a simple maintenance exercise.

We are going to have to pull everything apart and remove what is not working from what can be re-used. Most of the fans need to be replaced.

Some of the housings will be sent to the painter to sandblast and repaint.

And that's it from me.

Thank you for reading this post!

Cheers!
@zakludick

Hive South Africa