James_Ball wrote:
We use a oil lubed compressor that has about 100 gallons of storage tank on it, and it is filtered several times, lastly through a hospital grade chilled condenser to remove the last water and oil and it is over 100 feet from the zero air generator so we haven't had any oil problems.
At R&D, the original house oil-less compressor was eventually replaced with an oil-lubed one (for cost savings), with "controls" like you detailed. The maintenance/shop guys had the responsibility to maintain and drain that, and want to guess what happened? Basically the entire first floor of the laboratory had oil-contaminated air. The analytical chemistry department was fortunate that by chance I had mounted the zero air purifier high up on the wall, so the oil never reached it, and our GCs were not damaged.
We later used cotton-filled see-through filters so we could monitor and trap any oil contamination for the air used for regular lab tasks.
So - as Yogi Berra said - cost savings ain't always a savings !