The topic for today's discussion was inspired by a recent review of my archive of the many hundreds of hydraulic problems which have been thrown at me by hydraulic equipment users over the years.
Wanna know what the most common one is by far?
Overheating.
Yep. This darn thing is getting too hot.
And it's a simple problem really. If you understand percentages - and I know you do, then overheating problems are easy to get a handle on.
You see, it's a balancing act between the percentage of input power lost to heat and the percentage of heat dissipated by the system - mainly the heat exchanger.
Take a system with an input power of 100 kilowatts.
If it's 80 percent efficient, it's creating 20 kilowatts of heat load.
If the exchanger is dissipating 20 kilowatts of heat then a stable operating temperature will be maintained.

If the system starts to overheat, then either:
- the system is no longer 80 percent efficient; or
- the exchanger is no longer dissipating 20 kW of heat.

By Brendan Casey