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                              Online water in oil analyzers – A must for the 21st century!

                              Speaker : Phil Hughes – EESIFLO International Pte Ltd July 2005

                              Venue : Marriot Hotel Singapore

 

 

 

 

 

Periodic sampling and lab analysis provides valuable information, but it is not always timely enough to prevent failures or equipment damage. Despite the significant potential benefits, online oil analysis can provide challenges to adoption, including design and installation costs, and the difficulty of gaining plant commitment for the effort. This can cause some hesitance in thinking along bringing systems into the 21st century.  Additionally , online water on oil analysis puts the filtration manufacturer to the test and either proves or disproves that the systems work 24 hours a day to the stated specifications. This can be a serious moment of truth for some vendors who have never backed up their claims by vigorous pursuit of actual performance in real time situations .Owners and end users want to know what they have purchased is actually working. Bearing manufacturers who supply high precision and quality products need to know that all sources of water have been dealt with in a diligent manner by their clients . Bearing failures can be caused by several factors but eliminating or knowing that water has caused the primary damage gives them further negotiating power when discussing possible reasons for bearing life being less than what was expected. It is important to monitor water in all its forms, whether saturated , emulsified or free water. The EASZ-1 was developed to measure water in all forms and most importantly to  “catch” the free water (since in many cases there are so many possible sources of water contamination) which can loom its head at any time whether the oil is below or near to its saturation point.

 

We are now in the 21st century and turning a blind eye to online analysis should be a thing of the past. Almost everything these days is being monitored and improved in an effort by companies to increase profits, lower maintenance and repair costs and more recently accountability. It is not longer fashionable to  “guess”  amounts of  water contamination in oil through crackle tests and even more surprising in some places in Asia - visual inspection . Unreliable water reporting instruments which never change value or are so highly damped that reporting of a fast event are impossible to pick up must be challenged.The trends are however changing and more and more companies are making the effort and benefiting from online oil analysis which provides real time knowledge of events, some which can be deemed as possibly catastrophic if not picked up early enough or fast enough.

 


A major contaminant of lube oil systems is water. EESIFLO has developed a simple and affordable online water in oil analyzer that does not need any serious maintenance or continual re-calibrating of sensors or factory replacement sensors. The EASZ-1 can be installed in almost any type of oil and is not limited to lubrication oil and works simply by monitoring the change in dielectric properties of the flowing media through the cell. Research in Sweden by our developers in the early 90’s to the present date has produced PCB cards and sensors with increased stability ,accuracy and longevity.

 

 

The EASZ-1 water in oil sensor has been installed in crude oil applications, diesel , fuel, vegetable oil and hydraulics. Karl Fischer tests report water contamination in terms of ppm water in oil. For various reasons it is clearly understood that factories will  understand an output from the EASZ-1 in terms of ppm contamination or percent is the most understandable and logical way of comparing apples for apples. The analog output can be remotely displayed or connected to new or existing monitoring systems and the EASZ-1 will start measuring water as low as 100ppm and as high as 250,000 ppm.  The user has the choice of selecting his range through a simple dip fix switch.

 

 

Each unit is electronically tested to known values and can be zero offset to a particular type of oil. The choice is given to follow a custom curve for water/oil vs capacitance and even (if need be) to edit the curve if a substance other than oil is being measured for water contamination and adjustments should be made.

 

Water and oil do not really mix! The EASZ-1 is not a heavily damped device. It takes measurements in less than a second and reports the actual capacitance/water oil value immediately. If all water and oil are expected to mix completely along a lubrication line we could expect that when water contamination increases , we will see a slow rise in the values being reported. This can happen if we are starting with a completely dry oil that is increasing in its saturation value. However, free water can occur at any time. It is important to pick up even the smallest occurances immediately. These free water occurances can be seen as spikes or immediate increases in capacitance values above that of a dry oil. Repeated occurances or fast increase in water levels can alert the user to take immediate action or identity a problem that may have been unknown to him.

 

It is important to install the EASZ-1 in a location where the flow is representing as best as possible what is being fed through the process line. Vertical installation is recommended but not mandatory. A vertical installation will ensure that air bubbles can never be trapped within the EASZ-1 sensing area. For pipes larger than 1 inch, a bypass may be necessary. It is advised to install the bypass somewhere just after a bend in the pipe as turbulence increases the ability of the water and oil volumes passing through the probes to be more representative of what is actually flowing through the line. For the more serious contender , a static mixer upstream of the EASZ-1 sensor can be installed as an oil sample conditioning device.