Illichivsk, the freight harbour of Odessa/Ukraine, is situated in the southeast, about 20 km from the mega city at the Black Sea. UkrTransKonteiner runs one of the container terminals at the harbour. Some years ago the company has installed modern plants and equipment at the terminal. As interruptions and malfunctions disrupt the whole flux of loading, the responsible maintenance engineers changed from the previous products to ADDINOL.

The difficulty. Usually, straddle carriers move the heavy standard containers with ease. At the container terminal in Illichivsk, however, problems occurred time and again. The sliding surfaces of the guide rails were lubricated with graphite-containing competitive grease which was not up to the enormous mechanical loads. The maintenance engineers tried to solve the problem by applying more and more grease leading to a downright “overlubrication” which was visible at one glance and caused an irregular run of the guide rails.

Increased operating hours. Only by changing to ADDINOL Adhesive lubricant OG 0 the maintenance experts got the problem under control according to the company. The plant was cleaned thoroughly before the adhesive lubricant was applied evenly by the help of brushes. The aluminium-complex-grease with graphite contains highly efficient EP-additives (extreme pressure). It is said to provide reliable adhesive strength and extreme load-carrying capacity. By now the guide rails require only a fraction of the lubricant quantity previously used.

Apart from the guide rails all other components of the straddle carriers requiring lubrication were changed to ADDINOL products. The engine oil used for the terminal tractors before needed to be changed every 300 operating hours, with ADDINOL Diesel Longlife MD 1548 oil change intervals of up to 850 operating hours are achieved. The engine oil is not only applied at the diesel engines but also at the ZF manual transmissions of the terminal tractors and extended oil lifetime from 1,000 to 1,600 operating hours.

Benefit for further machines. Also the empty container handlers were changed to a new lubricant. Before, they were supplied with graphite-containing grease causing not only obvious damages on the surfaces but hindering the synchronous functioning of the telescopic frames. To solve this problem the terminal changed over to ADDINOL PTFE Fluid.

German article published in ConTraiLo 05/2011 (view German article here)