Minimac Systems Pvt. Ltd.

  This article aims to summaries how to read and understand the label on an oil can. That’s because brand and specification if chosen correctly, will affect the machine’s service life, reliability, ongoing maintenance costs, and help ensure the safety of all those working around. OEMs, oil marketers, additive companies, and testing laboratories work together to establish oil performance requirements, test methods, and limits for the various classifications and testing processes. The system includes a formal licensing agreement executed by lubricant suppliers with API. Through this program, API has standardized the labeling of engine oils by adopting the donut logo (Figure 1). The logo was designed to be placed in a prominent position on a variety of lubricant containers. API – American Petroleum Institute:  The American Petroleum Institute (API) administers the licensing and certification of engine oils through a system that meets the warranty, maintenance, and lubrication requirements

  Product storage is an important criterion for any segment of products. It plays a vital role in the longevity of the products, every product in any form has a certain life period and this life period forms the baseline of the product. Coming to the lubricating oil industry, product life period plays an important role in the smooth running of the machinery and the plant. As these oils play a very important role in the day to day functioning of critical machinery, so if not maintained properly these can lead to the breakdown of machinery thereby leading to a shutdown of the plant which leads to the incurrence of huge loss. Therefore it is very important that these oils should be used well in advance before their life period expires. We can hereby pen down certain prerequisite conditions for storage of lubricants: Pre usage Inspection:  It is mandatory to verify their performance properties & conditions with oil analysis for the oils that have been kept for a long period of time. On

For field inspection of lube oils, the following points are important to take action: Basic tests for lube oils are to observe the oil in glass sample bottle for colour inspection. If you observe that colour of lube oils is milky or dark in shade, then you have to process for further testing with hand held testing kits which are easy for use at the site. Following are the testing kits which can be used at the site for checking lube oil: Millipore Patch Testing Kit –  This testing kit is useful for measuring contamination in oil as per NAS/ISO by observing the patch paper with microscope. This is a very basic test to know if oil is contaminated or clean. This is a portable patch testing kit and easy to handle everywhere at the site. Hydrogauge Oil Test Kit –  It is used for checking moisture or water contamination in oil by adding a 10 ml sample in 2 types of different reagents. This is also an offline & portable testing kit which shows results approximately and at very low cost. Vi