Making your quality control of hydraulic and lube oils more efficient

Monitoring the quality of hydraulic and/or lube oils is critical to prevent premature wear of any kind of machinery. In this session we will look at this topic from a new perspective focusing on the combination of titration (potentiometric, thermometric, coulometric Karl Fischer titration) and Vis-Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (Vis-NIRS).

Combining titration (highly sensitive, specific, a widely used primary method) with Vis-NIRS (fast, non-destructive, results for multiple parameters at once) can make your oil condition monitoring and/or lubricant analysis much more efficient, especially, if your laboratory has to analyze large sample series every day.

Attending this session, you will learn and understand:

• The specific advantages of each method (titration and Vis-NIR-Spectroscopy)
• How and when to use these methods to measure critical chemical and physical parameters in lube and hydraulic oils
• What thermometric titration is and how it helps to improve robustness of serial acid number testing
• How to automate measurements of large sample series to increase efficiency and reproducibility
• How Vis-NIRS for lubricant analysis complies with ASTM guidelines and can save costs and time

Presenter: Robert Tobler (Application Specialist Titration)

Robert Tobler studied chemistry at the Zurich University of Applied Science in Wädenswil, Switzerland. He joined Metrohm in 2015 as an application specialist titration. Since 2018 he has also been involved in stability measurement.

Presenter: Nicolas Rühl, PhD (Product Manager Spectroscopy)

Dr. Nicolas Rühl is working in the Competence Center Spectroscopy since 2015. In this time, he has been in charge of developing the near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy business at Metrohm. Nicolas has a Master in Business Administration and received his PhD in physical chemistry on single-molecule spectroscopy using Vis-NIR and Raman spectroscopy technologies.

Moderator: Tom Lynch CChem FRSC (Independent Analytical Consultant, International Labmate)

Tom has 35 years of experience in the petroleum industry, specialising in the delivery of forensic and problem solving /method development capabilities for BP Fuels and Lubricants businesses globally. He was also a member of the BP Science Council representing Analytical Science and led a BP wide Analytical Science network.Tom has published over 30 citable papers, 4 book chapters and has given over 60 presentations at conferences. He is a past Vice President of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Analytical Division and a past Chairman of the RSC Separation Science Group. In addition, Tom is a recipient of the Silver Jubilee Medal by the Chromatographic Society and a technical achievement award by the Energy Institute.