News & Articles
The Economics of Fuel Dilution – the cost of one failed injector
Article by Bill Gillette (LogiLube) and Sanya Mathura (Strategic Reliability Solutions)
Some may consider a fuel injector failure in a diesel engine as an insignificant since many diesel engines have more than one fuel injector, so there is some repeatability involved. However, the failure of one fuel injector can directly impact diesel engines and possibly even cause operational upsets, especially depending on the application of the diesel engine.
For locomotive diesel engines any form of fuel dilution can lead to road failures, train delays, network congestion and even missing intermodal delivery windows. In open pit mining operations, productivity can be hampered if fuel dilution affects haul trucks or hydraulic excavators with their loading cycles. On the other hand, for underground mining, any issues with fuel dilution can lead to excessive emissions from poor combustion and this can trigger ventilation alarms and even shut down operations in the mine.
There are different severity levels which exist for a failing fuel injector based on its application. When comparing an open pit operation to an underground mining operation, the severity factors are more extreme in the underground mining operation. The main aspect of ventilation and how this impacts the operations is absolutely critical when differentiating between these two applications.
Some of the economic consequences of a fuel injector failure can include:
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Lost production
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Overtime labor
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Delayed schedules
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Reduced equipment availability
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Emergency maintenance costs
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Premature engine overhauls
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Secondary component damage
What makes fuel dilution particularly dangerous is that the failure mechanism often develops gradually before suddenly accelerating into catastrophic damage. There are small signs which indicate this impending failure or lead up to failure, and these are usually found in the oil analysis.
Through Autonomous Fluid Intelligence™ powered by SmartOil’s G3 Edge-AI Brain™, oil systems can be continuously monitored and an oil sample autonomously triggered following a parameter change. The G3 Edge-AI Brain™ has been engineered to continuously monitor viscosity trends, dielectric behavior, fuel contamination indicators and use AI to detect anomalies and detect early-stage injector deterioration before major operational disruption occurs.
Particularly for the locomotive and mining industries, there are several fuel injector related failure modes which are very expensive. By utilizing SmartOil’s G3 Edge-AI Brain™ processing proprietary algorithms, anomalies can be detected, operation disruptions and be avoided as the oil will capture the impending failure and the maintenance team can act accordingly.
SmartOil’s patented autonomous fluid sampling capability further allows forensic-quality, ASTM-ready fluid capture exactly when abnormal conditions emerge, triggering an Exception-Sample™, preserving critical diagnostic evidence often lost in traditional delayed oil analysis workflows.
Through the exception sampling, diesel engine operators can gain a better idea about the health of their engines and investigate the root causes of impending failures before they occur. This can significantly help in minimizing operational interruptions and financial losses. The SmartOil G3 Edge-AI Brain™ ensures that Asset Health and Maintenance teams can detect these anomalies in time without it negatively impacting the EBITDA. As shown in the chart, the EBITDA can be negatively impacted by 79% just for a fuel injector failure. Hence, there is a lot of value which can be added to operations through Autonomous Fluid Intelligence™.
In high-value industrial operations, preventing one catastrophic failure can justify an entire AI-driven predictive maintenance program.
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