Originally Posted by
PasserOGas
There IS NO WATER SEPARATOR. There is no dirty filter. They don't exist. What you describe is textbook fumes. It happens on descent due to valves opening to compensate for the reduction in thrust.
There was a video describing the reasons and times this was likely to happen (APU start, initial climb out, descent, almost never cruise), but now its locked behind the APA login page.
The most typical is a small puff of fumes on climb out, which passes and may or may not be noticable, then a major dose on descent as all the oil that has accumulated in the lines during the flight gets released by the wider open valves.
Bingo.
"Typical" event is oil seeps past the wet turbine shaft oil seal during cruise, oil vapors pool at areas within the ECS duct work that have bends/dips. When you begin a decent the engine bleed changes valves low pressure valve to high pressure valve to compensate for the low bleed output due to idle power and there is a pressure bump/spike that lifts the pooled oil in the ECS duct work and vaporizes it into the packs/cabin. Same can happen when switching bleed sources to APU from the pressure spike.
Then there are the major events. They happen when that engine oil turbine shaft seal (which on IAE engines operates at an unusually high 250+ psi) have a seal failure. When this happens the seal let's large quantities of oil by the seal and directly into the ECS system. This happens when a seal is damaged/worn except/fails. Very bad.
As to your previous question about baseline toxicity testing and the results, your body is always flushing toxins out. You inhale the toxins from the environment, and over time you flush them out. That doesn't mean you are not harmed in the process.
Also, the body can only flush so much at a time, so it's also a factor of are you taking in toxins faster than you can flush them out. But as Navy said, if you have annual baseline lab readings if you have a serious event, you are much more likely to be able to show elevated readings vs not having a baseline. Otherwise you can't prove an event harmed you, because the lawyers will just say that level is normal for you and you can't prove otherwise.
I want nothing more or less than a permanent tech or retrofit solution. There are rumored to be retrofit solutions available on the market.