Providing special lubricants for the highest performance and sustainability, safety, and reliability, as well as efficiency and cost-savings, FUCHS offers two food-grade lubricant ranges. These are the CASSIDA range, based on fully synthetic oils, and the CASSIDA FM range, based on semi-synthetic and white oils. The CASSIDA range is NSF H1 registered, as well as the South African plant being the only ISO 21469 certified site in Africa.
“The production of food, beverages and related products places the highest requirements on the lubricants used in the manufacturing process,” comments Jaco Kriel, Specialist Technical Sales, FUCHS LUBRICANTS SOUTH AFRICA.
Consumer protection is absolutely essential. In addition, ensuring that the production process runs smoothly and is highly effective is a number one priority for longer component lifetimes, extended maintenance intervals and energy savings.
Food-grade lubricants come in many forms, from white oils to semi-synthetic and fully synthetic oils and greases. The types of synthetic oil used in the production of CASSIDA food-grade lubricants are:
- Polyalphaoleofin (PAO): Used in hydraulic, chain and gear oils and as a base oil for most CASSIDA greases.
- Polyglycol: Used specifically in the CASSIDA FLUID WG series of worm gearbox lubricants.
- Ester: Used in conjunction with PAO in products such as the CASSIDA FLUID FL and CASSIDA FLUID HFS hydraulic oil ranges and CASSIDA CHAIN OIL HTE.
Fully synthetic oils are tailormade for high performance and offer superior performance over conventional mineral oils, vegetable oils and white oils. Synthetic oils are less susceptible to temperature changes due to their higher viscosity indexes, are cleaner in use, especially at the elevated temperatures found in heavily loaded systems and offer much better ‘sludge protection’ than mineral oils, especially in gearbox applications.
Synthetic oils accept additive packages more readily than mineral oils, while their refining process allows them to retain natural antioxidants and sulphur compounds with anti-wear characteristics. In general, synthetic oils offer significantly increased service life over mineral oils. For example, a synthetic compressor oil can provide an 8 000+ hour life compared with the 2 000 to 4 000 hour life of mineral or semi-synthetic oils.
