Lubricants are specially composed by mixing a number of chemicals with the base oil to minimize wear in machines, prevent contamination or improve operating conditions under difficult environmental conditions. The blended chemicals, called additives, contain organometallic and inorganic compounds as their active ingredients. So for quality control, one can quantify the amount of additives present in the lubricant by analyzing the concentrations of inorganic compounds.

The four most common types of lube oils are automotive engine oils, marine engine oils, industrial oils, and transmission oils. Each type of lube oil has a specific composition of additive elements that must be ascertained to assure proper lube oil quality. Even though the additive package for each type of lube oil contains essentially the same elements quality control, determining concentrations, can be somewhat challenging as samples are often subject to dilution prior to analysis. SPECTRO’s XRF and ICP-OES instruments enable fast, accurate lube oil analysis of the additive concentrations in the finished products.

The analytical techniques of choice for this lube oil analysis application are XRF and ICP-OES technology and SPECTRO offers complete product lines for both technologies to match your analytical and sample throughput requirements. Additionally, the instruments can be used to analyze used oil samples for their wear metal content.