Magnet filter eliminates engine wear
As anyone who owns a motor car will know, engines don’t last for ever. And they usually wear out when you least expect it.
Problem: All the time an engine is running, small metal particles are being scraped off rubbing surfaces, and as they continue to circulate with the lubricating fluid, these minute metal chips contribute extra abrasive material and so help to accelerate the problem of engine wear. Generally, the accepted solution has been to fit oil filters. The standard spin-on oil filter is typically efficient at capturing debris of diameters down to about 30 microns. The problem is that the remaining smaller ferrous particles (of 10 microns or less) are actually a greater hazard. Not because they are individually more aggressive, but because they can find their way into tighter gaps.
Solution: Blue Diamond of Eastleigh, Hampshire has an elegant solution to the problem.
It has developed a non-invasive solution called the FilterMag, which is basically a set of magnets arranged in a half-cylinder shape that simply clamps itself onto the outside of a standard spin-on filter.
The magnets are not standard magnets though. They are precision ground and arced neodymium and so are extremely powerful and their shape concentrates the magnetic field at the inside surface of the filter, trapping ferrous particles as small as one or two microns. Once captured, the iron debris stays put, imprisoned in a magnetic field so strong that the churning flow of lubricant cannot scour and wash them back into the oil stream.
The natural result is that the oil retains near perfect quality, and engine performance remains close to its optimum for a longer period. And when the time comes for a change of lubricant, the filter is simply discarded as normal, complete with its extra load of superfine contamination. The FilterMag is reusable and the user simply slides it off the old filter and fits it onto the new one. According to the company, the units should last ten years or more.
Applications: FilterMag has obvious applications in automotive engines, agricultural engines, power generation and any application that requires small metal particles (down to one or two microns in size) to be removed from the process to keep the lubricating fluid contaminant-free. DP
