UOA article - how Blackstone processes UOAs

Fantastic article - written well.
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I hope my UOA is done today!
 
Dave,

Thank you for braving the bad weather to drive to Blackstone to write this article!

Wayne
 
Awesome article. I never looked into how they get all the data, so this was interesting to me. Thanks!
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Nice to see the process behind the results.

Thanks Dave for your time and efforts; I was in Chicago a few days ago, so I know that you did indeed brave the weather in Indiana...
 
I am curious; when I send the oil to them, what can they find without me telling? Can they identify original viscosity, manufacturer etc?
 
Getting around to viewing many of the articles written here, and I must say: brilliant research and article writing! I think I'll grab a UOA test kit ahead of my next OCI (never done it before, but considering my 99 Dodge Ram has 219500 on the odo, it's time). Thanks for the article, definitely well-worth my time
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Just wanted to say that this company is one of the best I have ever worked with. Could not ask for nicer people.
 
Just a thought (and sort of a message to Blackstone) but have you ever considered adding Sulphur to the list of things you quote on your VOA/UOA reports? If, as I suspect, you are running these oils through ICP, then you should get the answer for 'free' so why not report it?
Sulphur is one of those important elements that formulators always look out for, for all sorts of reasons. You obviously get it from ZDDP. You get it from sulphonates and phenates and other additives. You can get it from base oil (maybe not so much these days in the US but elsewhere in the world, definitely). Also sulphur is the 'S' in SAP so it's important to know what the number is from that perspective.
 
All the information about how they do it, and what they do in the oil analysis is interesting. Where is the order form?
 
Bump with question. Maybe I misread, but it sounds from this write up like they test low temp and high temp viscosites, but the reports I've seen show "cst viscosity" at 100 degrees Celsius and "SUS viscosity" at 212 degree Fahrenheit. These are the same actual temp, so sounds like it's just a different scale they are measuring on (cst vs SUS). I haven't analyzed / compared various reports, but I found conversion formulas and tables, so all readings that show cst of 10.0, for example, would show the same SUS reading, 58.8 for this example, if I am reading correctly. Are they showing both SUS and CST just for convenience, because some customers may be used to one vs the other? I was actually hoping they were measuring at 2 different temperatures. That would be useful, and is what pds's show, right?
 
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Bump with question. Maybe I misread, but it sounds from this write up like they test low temp and high temp viscosites, but the reports I've seen show "cst viscosity" at 100 degrees Celsius and "SUS viscosity" at 212 degree Fahrenheit. These are the same actual temp, so sounds like it's just a different scale they are measuring on (cst vs SUS). I haven't analyzed / compared various reports, but I found conversion formulas and tables, so all readings that show cst of 10.0, for example, would show the same SUS reading, 58.8 for this example, if I am reading correctly. Are they showing both SUS and CST just for convenience, because some customers may be used to one vs the other? I was actually hoping they were measuring at 2 different temperatures. That would be useful, and is what pds's show, right?

Two different ways of measuring (and therefore different units of measure) of the kinematic viscosity.

"On the other hand, most common kinematic viscosity units are cm2/s in SI units and cSt (centistokes) in CGS, but it is also measured in a number of arbitrary units depending on the industry or application. Such is the case of Saybolt Universal Seconds (SUS) in the petroleum industry where the time required for 60 cm3 of fluid take to flow through a calibrated tube at 38°C is used as a measurement of viscosity."

 
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