An Experimental Study on the Measurement of Water Content in an Lubricating Oil by Implementing a Dew-point Condensation Sensor

이슬점 응축 현상을 이용한 오일 내 수분함량 측정에 관한 실험적 연구

Presence of water in the lubricating oils could be one of the first indicators of potentially expensive and possibly catastrophic failure of the machine as it may cause displace the oil films to prevent the lubrication function of the oil or chemically react with many oil additives resulting in the oil degradation. In order to detect water content quantitatively in lubricating oils many methods and sensors has been developed. Among these, capacitive sensors including sensitive layer, whose dielectric factor changes according to the water content absorbed in the layer, are proposed mainly in the market. But these sensors are not sensitive to a high water content. Besides, the absorbing layer soils in time. In this work, an evaporation of water moisture from oil into air volume above lubricant surface and condensation of water vapor at a cooling surface was used to measure water content quantitatively in an lubricating oil. Laboratory test results of a prototype sensor were presented. Test results showed that the proposed method could be avaliable to measure a low levels of oil moisture.