How to Decrease Reservoir Tank Size with HYDAC

Imagine halving the size of a hydraulic system's largest element: the reservoir tank. Traditionally, engineers have designed hydraulic reservoir tank systems using standardized rules, making only minor adjustments for different applications. A key standard involves sizing the reservoir to ensure adequate deaeration of the oil. While this method works, it relies on an increased tank size and a large volume of oil. But what if there's a more efficient approach?

In this episode of Evolution in Controls, host Tim Wilson welcomes special guest Andrew Krajnik, System Integrations Manager at HYDAC, to talk about HYDAC's innovative filter tank optimization strategies that can significantly decrease tank size and oil volume. Andrew begins by explaining why deaeration is so vital in a hydraulic system, stating that the system's hydraulic components won't function as well and the life of the system components and the oil will not last as long as they should.

The large tank size allows dwell time for the oil to settle and the air to rise out - the standard way to design a reservoir tank. To analyze the efficiency of this design and standard is HYDAC's simulating technology. Via computation flow dynamics (CFD), explains Andrew, HYDAC's engineers can simulate a customer's exact hydraulic system to see how well it deaerates. This process has highlighted hundreds of tank reservoirs that had the potential to become more efficient.

HYDAC achieves decreased tank size and heightened efficiency through an innovative, inverted return filter in these systems. This filter design reduces the velocity of returning oil, preventing it from dragging air bubbles, by making the entire surface a return point. It also keeps the returning oil closer to the surface so air bubbles have a shorter distance to move; at the same time, the filter's coalescing mesh merges tiny bubbles together to create larger air bubbles, causing them to rise more quickly.

By reducing the velocity, keeping the returning oil close to the surface, and coalescing the bubbles, the reservoir has significantly less churn and motion, resulting in much less air in the oil. This is all possible with HYDAC's innovative in-to-out filter. With less overall air in the oil, there is now no need for such a large, accommodating reservoir tank, meaning it can be reduced in size. With HYDAC's filter tank reservoir optimization strategy, customers can achieve greater savings than they ever thought possible.

Learn more about HYDAC's innovative filter tank reservoir optimization technology by visiting https://www.hydac.com/en/. To learn more about how Morrell Group can help optimize your mobile hydraulic systems, visit https://morrell-group.com.