Diesel engine coolant analysis, new application for established instrumentation
Rotating disk electrode (RDE) arc emission spectrometers are used in many commercial, industrial and military laboratories throughout the world to analyze millions of oil and fuel samples each year. In fact, RDE spectrometers have been used exclusively for oil and fuel analysis for so long, that most practitioners have probably forgotten that when RDE spectrometers were first introduced more than 40 years ago, they were also routinely used for aqueous samples. This paper describes recent work to calibrate and modify RDE arc emission spectrometers for the analysis of engine coolant samples; a mixture of approximately 50% water and 50% glycol. The technique has been shown to be effective for the analysis of wear metals, contamination and supplemental coolant additives in ethylene and propylene glycol. A comparison of results for coolant samples measured by both inductively coupled plasma (ICP) and RDE spectrometers will be presented. The data correlates extremely well on new and relatively clean coolants. However, not surprisingly, RDE results are sometimes higher for samples containing particles larger than a few micrometers. This paper suggests that RDE spectrometers are appropriate, and sometimes preferred, for most types of coolants and certain types of aqueous samples. Actual field data is be presented to support the arguments.
- Research Organization:
- Spectro, Inc., Littleton, MA (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 650043
- Report Number(s):
- AD-A-347981/XAB; TRN: 82430630
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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