Helping Haul Truck Filters Last up to Five Times Longer

A multi-year project to develop a 1,000-hour filtration solution for ultra-class haul trucks has enabled one of the world’s largest mining companies to achieve production goals, reduce costs, and increase profitability.

Fleetguard Filtration Science ultimately increased the company’s fuel filter life by two to five times, with no change to the nominal filter rating required.

Following a collaborative development and trial period of about two years, all of the company’s mining trucks were fitted with a customized fuel filtration solution developed specifically for their equipment.

 

For many years, a major mining company in Western Australia has used a 1,000-hour service interval for its mining trucks, because it enabled filter changes to be aligned with other maintenance schedules, such as mechanical and electrical servicing, reducing planned equipment downtime.

As the company upgraded its fleet from trucks with high-pressure injection (HPI) engines to trucks with modular common-rail system (MCRS) engines, the newer machines’ fuel filters struggled to achieve scheduled service intervals. On average, the new trucks’ filters were reaching the 1,000-hour mark only about half of the time.

It was clear that better filtration was needed to handle the new engines’ higher fuel pressures and tighter injector tolerances. In particular, they needed a solution that could better handle carboxylates, a form of soft contaminant that frequently clogged the secondary filter.

“The goal we actually had to get to was 1,200-plus hours,” said Warren Smith, global program manager for mining at Fleetguard. “Machines don’t always come in at 1,000 hours because of the challenges of scheduling a large fleet. Sometimes they might need to do another hundred hours or so before they come in.”

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Fleetguard worked with the mining company, haul truck manufacturer Komatsu, and engine manufacturer Cummins, to develop a stage-two fuel filtration solution that could capture hard and soft particles as small as 3 microns and keep the haul trucks running cleaner and longer.

“Normally with filter trials, I go to the site, install Fleetguard remote monitoring equipment and trial product on the machine, and manage it with the people on-site,” Smith explained. “But in this case, they had their own monitoring system, so we were able to just send them the filters. They did all the installation and data capture. We did several trials and we worked really well together.”

The Fleetguard team expanded the filter assembly to provide 2.5 times the media capacity. They also performed extensive fuel quality testing, starting with the bulk filtration system used by the company at the port where its fuel is unloaded from tanker ships.

As the trials progressed, the partners found that prototype filters were falling short of their goals when seasonal temperatures dipped. Fuels formulated for Australian use aren’t typically changed for winter, as they commonly are in North America. Collaborating with the fuel supplier helped Smith’s team to identify an issue with fuel additives and variations in fuel quality from different refineries in the supply chain, which were causing the filters to clog prematurely with soft contaminants during cooler weather. The mining company upgraded its bulk filtration system to offset these inconsistencies, but new filters were still needed to capture residual carboxylate particles on individual haul trucks.

Four different media concepts were then hand-built for the trial. To reduce the project timeline, 20 of each concept filter were shipped to the mining company in Australia for real-world tryouts while Fleetguard ran internal tests in parallel.

A clear winner emerged from the joint testing: a 3+3-micron, multilayer design that maintained the original’s efficiency at capturing hard particles while increasing its capacity to handle soft contaminants by up to five times. It also proved capable of extending service intervals up to 1,200 hours if needed. Media in the updated version combined conventional cellulose material with high-performance NanoNet® fibers that enable soft contaminants to spread over all the media layers, thus increasing load capacity for hard and soft particles 3 microns or smaller.

As a result of its long-term collaboration with Fleetguard, the mining company consistently achieves its 1,000-hour service interval goal. The improved filter capacity also enables the company to stretch service intervals to 1,200 hours when needed, creating a buffer for the maintenance team when unplanned downtime or operational issues occur.

Are filtration challenges keeping you from achieving your operational goals? We can help. Contact your Fleetguard representative.