Improved Wear Metals Analysis for Lubricant Field Trials

Field trials of lubricants require accurate wear metals analysis with no bias from additives, viscosity or base stock type. Conventional emission spectrographic rotrode methods often have errors of up to 25 percent from additives alone. A rotrode method using a nickel internal standard and a strontium buffer has been developed which eliminates almost all interferences. This new method has been applied to field testing of a wide variety of automotive and industrial lubricants.