Detecting Water Contamination in Oil

One of the methods for detecting water in the lube oil tank would be capacitance set for detecting water as it will have a higher conductivitiy than that of the Oil... Here is an article on the referenced use.... http://www.machinerylubrication.com/article_detail.asp?articleid=1030&relatedbookgroup=OilAnalysis

Hope this helps....

Dear Sir,

Thank you very much for your help.

regards,

Asitha

If you are having a problem with water mixing/ emulsifying with the oil, the concept of using an electronic device for detection is a good one. On another note, depending on the exact type of fluid, my company has several products that will not emulsify. The water will lie on the bottom, while the oil will float on top. The water can then be manually drained off the bottom. Even if the water and oil were agitiated, they would settle out after 15 seconds.

Give me a call (216-401-1845) if this might help with your situation.

I agree with Ral412, that capacitance devices offer the best solution.

I've used capacitive fuel gauges in aircraft for over 20 years. Besides the fact that they are far more precise than float type sending units, the tubes will drop the circuit capacitance dramatically if any water collects at the tip. This is a serious condition for aircraft which often fly at altitudes where temperatures can fall below freezing and water can freeze and block the fuel lines.

I installed capacitive sending units in both fuel oil tanks for my home heating oil for this reason.

The better capacitance type systems set off an alarm when water is present. They also have min, max potentiometers that allow you to set the levels at which an alarm goes off when there is too much fluid, or not enough, an important consideration with lubricants.

These combinations of features make capacitive sensing systems a natural for your application as they allow you to wire an alarm in case the lubricant level drops too far and another for an alarm should excess water accumulate on the bottom of the tank.

They are not at all expensive, even when the sensing tube must be custom bent and cut to a specific length.

With the appropriate gauges and cut to our specs, we rarely have to spend more than $120 for a unit. And, if we want to get really extravagant, we can run the wires up through the house to a remote digital readout which can be inspected without having to make a special trip to the boiler room.

I suspect however, that advances in technology have now made these devices with wireless transmitters.

I used to get ours from a marine distributor in Florida as I found that the prices were dramatically cheaper than the same identical product from A/C distributors. Haven't installed one in some time but I see ads that suggest I can now buy them direct from the manufacturer.

L. J.

A very simple method is to use the "crackle" test.

Heat a teaspoon, or something similar to just over 100⁰C, so that when you place a droplet of water on it, it evaporates. Then take a small sample of the oil to be tested ( an eye dropper does the trick), and drop one droplet of oil on the hot spoon.

If the oil just smokes and burns the oil has no water in it. If the oil crackles you have a small percentage of water in the oil. If the sample crackles and spits you have over 2% of water in your oil.

The reason why this works so well is that when any water in the oil vapourises it expands 1 700 times its volume.............and it does spit.

If you require an alarm, methods have been proposed as to how that maybe carried out.