Lubrication Engineers (LE) worked with a large regional brewing company to protect a one-of-a-kind Flender H3LV secondary gearbox in the brewery’s lauter tun using Duolec Industrial Gear Oil. The secondary gearbox is critical to separating mash from wort and moving spent grain. Replacement components would require custom manufacturing, making the gearbox a high-value, hard-to-replace asset.
The brewery’s challenge was to protect this gearbox from wear while extending drain intervals. Its original OEM warranty fill, a major oil company’s gear oil, was first run to 5,000 hours and then showed excessive wear metals and additive depletion at 2,500 hours on the second fill. This demonstrated that a standard big-brand lubricant was not adequate for the demanding lauter tun application and underscored the need for a higher-performance solution.
In response, LE used oil analysis to recommend draining the competitor’s gear oil at 2,500 hours and switching to Duolec Industrial Gear Oil (1605), a high-performance ISO VG 220 gear oil, positioning itself as a data-driven reliability partner.
Because Duolec 1605 is acceptable for use in any industrial gear or bearing application requiring high thermal stability and extreme pressure performance, the brewery also gained the potential to consolidate to one product and simplify lubrication decisions plantwide.
After converting to Duolec 1605, the brewery achieved eight years of operation on the secondary gearbox with no oil changes, reaching 25,000 working hours with oil analysis showing an ISO 4406 cleanliness code of 16/14/11 to validate cleaner oil and better protection for this critical asset. The brewery has documented savings of $18,518 in replacement oil cost, and the switch to Duolec eliminated 620 gallons of waste oil, supporting its sustainability goals by cutting waste oil and environmental impact.
LE also helped the brewery implement a lubrication reliability program around the gearbox that consisted of contamination control and condition monitoring. These reliability solutions included breathers to help keep airborne contamination and moisture out of the gearbox, oil sight glasses for quick visual checks of oil level and condition, regular oil sampling and analysis and filtration to further improve oil cleanliness.
“The most important result was that the Duolec (oil) stopped the component wear,” the brewery’s engineer said.
