Online monitoring of lubricant quality

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Practically all machines and engines require lubrication, but, surprisingly, there exists not a single online sensor that is capable of measuring the quality of the lubricant in real time. For example, lubricants quickly oxidize as soon as antioxidant additives are consumed, yet oxidation stability is typically measured off-line in a process that is prone to producing false positives. In recent years we collaborated with GasTOPS Ltd. to identify spectroscopic signatures that allowed us to accurately determine antioxidant concentrations. Currently, these measurements require a commercial fluorescence excitation-emission-matrix spectrometer with a large footprint and a cost of >$40,000 that produces 46 x 550 spectroscopic measurements every 20-40 mins. Such an instrument is unsuitable for robust, online and real-time analysis. In this joint project we will develop two prototypes that are capable of measuring antioxidant concentrations every 5 seconds.