On-line sensors for oil condition monitoring

Kittiwake, an established leader in the fuel and lube oil testing market in the marine industry, launches the Analexrs range of remote on-line sensors for lubricant and machine condition monitoring

Kittiwake, an established leader in the fuel and lube oil testing market in the marine industry, has launched the Analexrs range of remote on-line sensors for lubricant and machine condition monitoring.

Remote on-line sensor technology is increasingly looking like the way forward in the 21st Century and Kittiwake have merged the features of their current onsite and lab based equipment to develop the Analexrs online sensors.

Key customers in the military, production and merchant marine are all subject to manpower pressures in combination with increased machinery reliability and availability.

Oil analysis is an integral part of any reliability programme but increasingly the manpower is not available to undertake this work.

Measuring oil condition and wear debris, on-line and in real time is the way forward.

The new Analexrs range puts lubricant and machine condition information in the hands of the engineer, real-time.

Improving the overall analysis process and allowing for accurate trending through more consistent and frequent measurements.

The end result is a more profitable and proactive maintenance strategy and no demand on manpower.

The Analexrs remote sensor family is the culmination of 4 patents and 5 years of research work and spans.

* Total Ferrous content - identifying all ferrous debris down to the very smallest sub micron particles.

* Metal Particle Content - identifying and quantifying ferrous and none ferrous wear debris.

* Oil Condition - showing changes in the condition as the oil ages or becomes contaminated.

* Moisture detection - quantifying the moisture content of the oil or humidity in the sump head space.

With self-diagnosing, digital and analogue outputs, the new sensors can be easily integrated into existing condition monitoring and operating control systems.

Communicating with existing systems using industry standard 4-20ma, RS232, RS485, CAN and 802.11b WLAN outputs these sensors are very simple to include in your current maintenance system.

Ideal for extreme conditions the units are protected to IP65 or IP67.

The intelligent oil condition sensor and moisture sensors are constructed from high grade stainless steel, designed to screw directly into the oil flow and are extremely robust in all conditions.

The oil condition sensor utilises a patented technique around single frequency impedance spectroscopy, known as the Tan-delta and provides output of oil condition and temperature.

The moisture sensor uses a capacitive technology with a water permeable membrane to quantify the percent relative humidity.

The sensor has a unique self diagnosis system and provides output for humidity, temperature reading and alarm facility.

The Total Ferrous and particle content sensors utilise patented techniques developed from the successful range of Analex PQ laboratory magnetometers.

Sensitivity to particle size is extremely high with no effect from outside interferences.

The total ferrous wear debris sensor uses advanced magnetometry to measure ferrous density in the lubricant of all particle sizes down to submicron levels, and gives a reading directly in PPM.

The particle content sensor has advanced signal processing circuitry to capture data on ferrous and non-ferrous metal particles, and provides size distribution counts, particle capture rates and analysis by mass distribution.

Both are designed with intelligent self diagnosis and with an emphasis on installation in harsh environments.

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