Automatic measurement of water in oils

For car production machines in Škoda Auto, oils are like a blood in human body. If the oil is of low quality, it causes various damages for Škoda Auto machines and subsequently stops the production lines. Therefore, we have to analyse profoundly the oil and detect foreign particles, such as water. If there is excess of water in the oil, it causes corrosion; if there is lower amount of water in the oil, it causes oxidation and decrease of oil’s lifetime. Many times, the presence of water in oils is detected no sooner than the machine starts to react in a negative way. For this reason, we decided to replace the older, longer and manually demanding method for measurement of water in oils with the modern analytical method of Metrohm OMNIS representing a new fully integrated solution for water content determination in oils by means of volumetric Karl Fischer titration. By testing this new method, we found out that, compared to the original method, it is three times faster and there is a decreased consumption of chemical products. The measurement takes place using an autosampler allowing to measure on-line up to 36 samples without the operator’s presence, and thus we can regularly analyse big numbers of oil samples from the most important production machines. In the end, we are now checking more samples and thus preventing car production downtimes.