For fluid & oil condition monitoring
VALVES & FLOW CONTROL SPECTROLYTIC ’ S FLUIDINSPECTIR ®
SPECTROLYTIC
For fluid & oil condition monitoring
The established process for fluid and oil condition monitoring is to periodically take a sample and have it analysed in a laboratory . Customers rely on this periodic data to react to trends to plan servicing and maintenance and to reduce asset downtime from failure .
Driven by the constant market economic pressure to reduce costs and eliminate unplanned maintenance time , Spectrolytic has developed a measurement solution to match the market needs of our customers in all our sectors .
Spectrolytic ’ s FluidInspectIR ® series - are OEM proven , robust and affordable fluid condition monitoring equipment that gives customers meaningful and understandable real-time data in the same parameters and in the same units as they are commonly receive it from their laboratory analysis .
Our products are already monitoring 100 ’ s of plant assets over 1000 ’ s of operational hours and managing millions of litres of industrial oils and fluids every day across the globe .
1 . Introduction
Oils , lubricants , cooling fluids play a critical role in industry in the operation of plant assets .
Conventionally , plant engineers operating and maintaining high value assets rely on taking fluid samples periodically and sending them to a laboratory for analysis . It can take up weeks and sometimes even months from sampling to receiving the sample report and introduces a large time lag in the reporting of the fluid condition .
The benefit of having real-time
monitoring of the fluid condition is vast . Customers will not only have the satisfaction of being in complete control of their asset , but have substantial cost savings by
• Extending Asset Viability and Prolonging Asset Life :
• Reducing Oil / Fluid Usage Costs :
• Eliminating Unplanned Maintenance :
• Lowering Labor Costs :
• Minimizing Machine-Human Interface :
• Cutting Reliance on External Laboratories :
FluidInspectIR ® Analyser systems
2 . Oil Condition Sensor Platform Spectrolytic has developed a unique technology platform with the FluidInspectIR ® ( see figure 1 ) that can be seamlessly installed in-line or at-line ( portable ), and that utilises the powerful analytical technique of mid-infrared spectroscopy to measure the chemical composition of a fluid . Additional sensors can be added to measure physical properties such as viscosity and contamination .
With each measurement the sensor determines the changes of the fluid at a molecular level using the same analytical technique and data extraction as employed by laboratories around the world .
3 . Applications The FluidInspectIR ® series of systems are being used many different application areas such as Oil Condition Monitoring on marine fleets , power plants , turbomachinery , steel and aluminium rolling and industrial fluids .
The systems are being employed on cooling fluids for metal working and data centres , fuel screening such as gasoline , biodiesel and jet fuel and where there is a requirement for fast , high resolution measurements in pharmaceutical , and biochemical manufacturing processes .
The systems are ATEX certified and can be installed in Zone 1 , Group 2C explosive environment .
The power of the real time data via the FluidInspectIR ® inline sensor can be exemplified in a use case on a VLSFO engine on a dredging vessel .
The sensor detected unusual pattern of water content in the lube oil which was traced back to a failure of the cooler and caught in time to prevent catastrophic engine failure .
The real-time and accurate measurement provided by our sensor saved the customer potentially £ 10,000s of repair cost and unplanned down time
It would NOT have been possible to pick this failure mode up with conventional lab-based oil analysis .
For further information , please visit www . spectrolytic . com
136 PECM Issue 70