Did you ever wonder just how much water is in your hydraulic or lube oil , diesel or fuel? Wouldn't it be nice to have that information without sending the fluid out to a laboratory? Free water in hydraulic, lubrication and fuel can impair fluid performance and adversely impact equipment effectiveness, uptime and reliability. Because concern is related to the presence of free water, equipment operators need to know the exact amount of water in the fluid. Since the saturation point of a fluid can change over time, it is important to know the total moisture or water content in the liquid so that preventative measures can be implemented before the damaging effects of water can take place.

The EESIFLO EASZ-1 Water Sensor allows you to obtain this information immediately in an easy to use form. It is the only true instrument that give a guaranteed immediate response. The sensor is not affected by contaminants or knocked out of service by larger amounts of water. It does not need to wait for sensor equilibrium before measurements, the measures are immediate and in real time.

The Sensor very accuractely measures the dielectric of oil, diesel or fuel of any type with added temperature compensation . By monitoring water content accurately in any state or form, the unit allows action to be taken prior to the formation of free water, thus preventing problems such as additive depletion, oil oxidation, corrosion, reduced lubricating film thickness, microbial growth, reduction of dielectric strength , bearing failure and in the case of fuel there can be engine problems due to water contaminated fuel. If free water is also present, the EASZ-1 will also measure it accurately. In a perfect world, free water should not be present. However, users can never be sure about this because it is possible that contamination can happen so quickly that it will go unnoticed.The truth is, we need to know if there is a moisture build up on the oil and we also need to know about every drop of free water if free water has somehow got into the system.

Why complete water in oil measurement is necessary?

The industry standard practice has been to accept laboratory reports of water in oil as percent of total volume or in PPM. Customers who carry out regular sampling programs should know what is acceptable for one fluid and not for another. If they did not, then this would negate any laboratory testing. Karl Fischer and other laboratory methods should give conclusive results for water in oil values in a sample. However, the sample does not represent the total volume of fluid passing through the process. It is simply a snapshot and there are questions that may arise regarding the validity of these “snapshots” such as what frequency of samples is necessary, how the sample should be handled and at which point in the process stream it should be extracted. The representativeness of a sample sent to a lab can compromise the actual need , which is “complete water in oil measurement” To ascertain how much moisture or water is actually in a system, it would be necessary to measure the total volume online, 24 hours a day. So that nothing is missed, the sensor needs to report values in real time. The EASZ-1 has a response time of 1 second , it can measure moisture build up in ranges lower than 100ppm water in oil with a resolution of +/- 35ppm. Free water will also be measured in the thousands of ppm ranges if free water contamination is present. There is no way to know if free water contamination has occurred unless it is measured. The contamination can occur at any time and for any reason unknown to the user.

A relatively new and dry oil is sold in a form expressing a ppm or percent value of water in oil. The standard specifications of an oil express small amounts of ppm or percentage . As the oil becomes contaminated over time it will be necessary to ascertain how ppm water in oil have deviated from the original specification. The EASZ-1 reports can be used to directly correlate this and provide meaningful results and trends over time.

Measurement of a water oil emulsion or a phase separation where free water is formed in the fluid is to be avoided in most applications. Some oil applications may require measurements in this phase. This is not a problem for the EASZ-1 which will keep measuring at any contamination level up to 250,000 ppm.

Because changes in fluid temperature will vary the percent saturation, a system with constant water content that experiences significant temperature changes creates the possibility of turning dissolved water into damaging free water. This can occur very quickly and it is important that free water droplets are measured. The free water is not evenly dispersed within the line so it must be picked up in “pockets” .The EASZ-1 sensor reports complete and total water levels. Free water in pockets will be seen as spikes in the output. As the free water increases, the spikes will occur more frequently.

OPERATION

The sensing element of the Water Sensor is a robust stainless steel cell that changes its capacitance with the changes in the water content of the fluid passing through it .The circuitry on the sensing element converts the capacitance into a linear, current output to a controller or remote display/alarm.The response of the sensor to a step change in water content is instantaneous and does not need time to stabilize because of change in temperature.

With its ability to monitor complete water content, the EASZ-1 water sensor provides accurate results regardless of fluid type, regardless of temperature and most importantly every once a second without needing time to stabilize.

The EASZ-1 is not a remote device. It is fitted into an actual oil stream. This is necessary as it will measure actual fluid passing through the sensing elements length. It is important for a large volume of oil to pass directly through the sensing cells and sometimes the absolute total volume.. It is possible to manufacture probe style units but tests have shown that this causes doubt in reported measurements simply because the volume of liquid touching sensor elements would be inadequate without inline static mixers .. For special applications, the EASZ-1 can be supplied in different versions and materials having the absolute total volume of liquid passing through the sensor cells.

Applications

The EASZ-1’s application flexibility enables it to be used in a wide range of applications. Apart from lubrication ,hydraulic and fuel systems, the EASZ-1 is also used in its larger 2 inch version of accurate measurements of water in crude oil pipelines.