Portable solution for preventing expensive repairs - Case Study

Portable oil analysis solutions empower ship maintainers to act fast in preventing failure

Marine operators have known why oil analysis is a critical part of a good maintenance program for quite some time, and they practice it with combinations of onboard test kits and shoreside analysis laboratories commonly provided by the lubricant supplier.

Slow steaming, long component lead times, constant switchovers from HFO to lowsulfur fuel, and high and low BN lubricants means having an effective oil analysis program to monitor these fluctuations is more important than ever before. The challenge to asset maintainers is unlocking the value of oil analysis to maintain or improve ship performance while lowering the costs of maintenance.

Portable oil analysis solutions have been developed to unlock the value of oil analysis on board, enabling maintenance personnel to take action as soon as the issue is discovered, thereby eliminating the wait for results, or the need for extra tests to understand the issue.

Current challenges

Vessels use a combination of oil analysis methods, including daily onboard testing (using wet chemistry kits) and periodically sending samples to an offshore laboratory to analyze wear debris. Wet chemistry kits have a number of challenges: the cost can be up to US$23 per test when you factor in the cost of shelf-life limited chemicals, storage and training, and frequent recalibration offshore. Results may not be repeatable and it can take a long time to do one test – valuable time a maintainer can put to good use somewhere else on board. Shorebased labs adequately analyze for trending metals and lubricant condition parameters; however, the time delay will always remain an issue, particularly when a known problem is developing in a critical asset and it needs to be monitored closely. So what can be done to overcome these challenges?

Spectro Inc offers a set of solutions to transform the vessel owner’s onboard oil analysis program. As instrumentation size decreases and becomes more portable, oil analysis devices are now being put in the hands of the end user. It has been proven that these new smaller devices do not sacrifice analytical performance. This brings the end user closer to the vessel and its problems, enabling time-sensitive, critical decision making.