Stability of Lubricants and Coolants

Coolants and lubricants are in essence oil water or water oil emulsions that serve two principle means: with its high heat capacity the water phase serves as the temperature control conduit while the oil is responsible for good lubrication.  Lubricant constituents such as slipway oils and other impurities often lead to destabilization of emulsions during the application process resulting in reduced performance of the product and possible catastrophic failures of the mechanical moving parts involved.  Until now assessment of  lubricant stability was tested for 2 days by measuring the thickness of the separated phases (skimming layer, clear phase, etc.) in a graduated cylinder using a ruler. The relatively long measurement time and the imprecise measuring technique are clearly a major disadvantage of this method.

With the LUMiFuge all of these problems are addressed.  You can easily measure the stability for up to 12 samples at various temperatures at one time all on the scale of microns.  In addition processes such as coalescence, Ostwald ripening, creaming and other instabilities can be easily identified.  Figure 1 shows the stabilities of .....

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