Quality control is the term with which we are most familiar. As the term is used by industry, it involves testing of units and determining if they are within the specifications for the final product. There are aspects of oils that go beyond testing or represent a different way of testing. For most of us, quality inspection is what we think of when someone says Lubricants and Grease Trading UAE.
Quality inspection involves the actual laboratory testing of gasoline engine oils. We look at viscosity, volatility, metals content, flash point, pour point and various other properties of the oil to make sure that what we ship is as advertised. It’s important that the inspection tools used are operating properly and that the test procedures are current. Test precision repeatability and reproducibility must be maintained.
How do you know that the components are right? That’s what some might call quality conformance. Most labs test incoming raw materials. Do they know what controls are used by their suppliers to assure that what they ship is correct? Do they know if the supplier has made its own quality assurance checks to know that what is being shipped is on-spec?
When I was at technolubeuae, we had a very interesting quality issue that developed. A new additive source began passenger car engine lubricant oil additive from the Gulf Coast to our West Coast plant in the United Arab Emirates area. The supplier’s specification called for a viscosity of 115 centistokes at 100 degrees Celsius. The first tank car or two arrived right on the mark. However, the third car arrived with a viscosity of 150 CST. It was barely out of spec (the maximum allowed was 145 CST, as I remember) and raised a yellow warning flag. Because of demand and the fact that everything else was correct, we accepted it but required the commercial oils supplier to make corrections to the blend to fix the problem.
Things went from bad to worse over the next two shipments and caused us to put a hold on further receipts. After intense efforts by both technolubeuae and the supplier, we figured out what was going on. When an automotive engine oil additive is manufactured, the hottest, most viscous additive component, which may be over 150 C, is blended with diluent oil to reduce viscosity and cool the blend.
Apparently, this component, which is dispersant, was not being cooled enough. When the other components were blended into the mix, a secondary reaction was occurring that increased the viscosity of the additive. The supplier assured us that this reaction didn’t have any impact on the performance of the additive. Nevertheless, normal quality control wouldn’t have caught this had it not been for the lubricant blending plant chemist.
