Determination of Wear Metals Debris Concentration in Aircraft Engines

Abstract

The presence of debris of metals in the lubricating oil provides important information about the conditioning monitoring of machines. Commonly used method involves use of spectroscopic methods. The sample characteristics was analyzed using two samples of lubricating oils that were categorized A1 and A2. The dry ash method was adopted for the preparation of samples of oil and concentrated H2SO4 in a ratio 1: l, followed by dissolution in a 2 Molar HNO3 acid. These samples were separately subjected to absorption spectroscopy based on atomic analysis and infrared spectroscopy based on Fourier analysis. The concentrations of the wear metals debris were determined along with their corresponding wavelengths. The metals determined includes iron (Fe), Lead (Pb), Manganese (Mn), Zinc(Zn), Copper(Cu), Cadmium(Cd), and Chromium(Cr). The information about thesemetal concentration is an important factor for monitoring and maintenance of aircraft engines and can help in quantitatively recovery of these metals, hence solving environmental problems to some extent.