On board our ship we have two MMPX404 purifiers.

After these purifiers have been dismantled/cleaned and assembled again they don't want to close the bowl when put in operation.
All o-rings have been changed using an alfa laval service kit.

After opening the bowl several times and removing/checking of the o-rings it will all of a sudden work fine again.

We are wondering if someone has any idea why this problem occurs?

Water supply,vane in hollow shaft and small opening in shaft have all been checked.

Thanks

This sounds to me like a water issue. You said you checked the water, what does that exactly entail? I would check the supply water filters, and the header tanks. I would certainly run the diagnostic from the EPC (Alfa Laval control panel), measure the amount of water actually being delivered to the bowl.

We had a pretty good post a while back that covered pretty much all the trouble shooting on purifier I would imagine, you can find the discussion at http://www.dieselduck.ca/forum/viewtopi ... 2a91#p2138. If after reading that, you still don't have direction on a course of action, then I would imagine that I would be stumped.

Let us know what you find out.

Martin,

Like we tould you the water supply is ok.

One of the o-rings on the operating slide we flicked over ( rectangular one, wich in original position is hard to fit ) and we alligned the position of the holes in the operating slide and distributing ring lower.
This did the trick this time but as we experienced before it might be something else next time?

Hopefully this will ring a bell with other engineers wich might have the same problem.

Thanks for your reply.

E.Trader wrote:and we alligned the position of the holes in the operating slide and distributing ring lower.

Shouldn't there be a locating dowel pin or guide to keep the alignement the same??

BP

I have worked briefly with these types of machines, but not enough to troubleshoot conversely, I have books for the 303 which I believe is very similar to the 404. I am not able to think of the problem, obviously you have the manual and have gone through the troubleshooting for the "opening bowl". I include the parts drawing, perhaps you could pinpoint the ring you were talking about for us to follow along...

That's ring number 6 in your drawing.

Just a little bit more information on the alignment story.

There are no locating dowel pins or guiding lines/marks. Which is very strange unless part 5 can be fitted in any position. This makes sense as Alfa Laval always marks its parts with pins or lines if they have to be fitted in a certain way to each other.

The two holes in bottom of part 5 where aligned with the holes in part 1. Then the holes in the circumference of part 8 where aligned with those on the circumference of part 5 (these holes lead to the ones in the bottom via two bores).

Note: part 12 is aligned with a dowel pin to part 8 (part 12 a).

Will keep you posted as we are at the moment also overhauling the second seperator.
See if the trick works a second time .

Hi E Trader,

looking at Martins drawings there are 2 Dowel pins, 12A and 12B attached to part 12.
One obviously goes into part 8 is the other one to locate the base of the disc stack? In which case I would have thought it would be drawn above the bowl. It is not too clear to me from the drawing. Maybe it should go down to part 5??

If you are having the same symptoms with both purifiers it sounds like a common cause.

If it is not a missing dowel, the other possibilities I can think of are that the "O" Ring seals are slightly oversize and sticking.
Another possibility is lubrication. Laval are very keen on rubbing Molybenum Di-Sulphide lubricant into the contact faces and buffing them up to build up a low friction coating on the surface. A lot of hard work to do properly.
Westfalia usually recomend mixing 50% ordinary grease and and 50% Moly to make a lubricant that does not "dry out" like pure Moybdenum Di- Sulphide extreme pressure lubricant, which is solvent based.

Happy Hunting!!

Big Pete

Thanks for the reply. The lubrication story is worth trying. About the alignment: in the 404 there is no dowel 12b like in the 303 seperator. The second seperator is working again at the moment. In any case will keep you posted if there are any intresting developments.

Excellent thread, Gentleman

we have the same problem about purifier MMPX 404, but this time is deffirent cause i change everything the oring's and seal ring i also apply the lubrication paste, but when i start the system theres a problem, it cannot build up back pressure and when the MV1 valve or three way valve operates the ampere will go up and it will remain in 6 amperes, until it will alarm, but then when we discharge manually it will go back to 2 amperes. please if you have any ideas about this problem can you share it to me so that i can apply it, thank in adavance.

If the purifier is operating on heavy fuel or lube oil it sounds like you are getting a shot of cold oil through the purifier.
Try letting the oil recirculate through the heater for a couple of minutes before starting the process program.

thanks for the reply, we used this MMpx 404 for deisel oil and lub. oil, we dismantle it again and placed it in the lub oil, then it works, we didn't transfer the distributor and the suction side, which is wing and the pump sleve. hope you any idea for this cause when i put the part from lub oil to deisel it will not work, but all its the same model. thank again in advance hoping for reply.

Good day, what happened of the mmpx 404 if the clean oil outlet becomes inlet. while the inlet pipe going to purifier still in inlet. can you please give me some answer on this kind of problem. hoping for your reply thanks.

hi , we also had a problem with these purifiers, water was leaking out the bottom and everyso often the purifier would loose seal and fill the tank with fuel, we changed the o rings many times but still the same . in the end the water seal was leaking past the o-ring on the upper distribution ring, still dont know why it was doing this, anyhow we replaced the o-ring with a rectangular ring and that fixed it, but this was a very unusual repair but it worked, alfa laval said that when we needed to buy replacement o-rings in a set instead of ordering individualy (which is cheaper) i dont really accept that . ok cheers