I am a student doing my final year project on the particulate contamination levels in diesel fuels in South Africa.

Our tribology lab is interested in purchasing a particle counter for more complete fuel analysis.

What equipment will be sufficient for this purpose? What is the approximate costs?

Particle size distribution is also of interest, will any of these particle counters be able to give a meaningful size distribution. I do know that many counters basically give you ISO4406 contamination codes. Is this sufficient?

Thank you for any help.

Jaco

Normal modern particle counters will give you ISO4406:99 (>4, >6 and >14µm) together with NAS1638 (5-15, 15-25, 25-50, 50-100 and >100µm). This should give you plenty of information.

If your budget is wide, I would suggest the LaserNet Fines, developed by NAVAL Reasearch center / Lockheed Martin, sold by Spectro INC. This instrument is at the next level within particle analysis. It uses a digital camera, photographing the particles, and then its software detects what kind of particles are present and how many.

This is what you get:
(ECD - Circular Diameter):
ISO4406:89 & 99
NAS1638
AS4059D
(And some other reporting systems)
(MD - Maximum Diameter >20µm):
Total particles pr. ml.
Avarage particle diameter
Maximum particle diameter
Qty Fatigue wear particles
Qty Cutting wear particles
Qty Sev. Sliding wear particles
Qty non-metallic particles
Qty Fibres

In addition it now can detect %Soot and more. The smartest thing with this system is that the software keeps on expanding its functonability.

Thank you Oslo,

Unfortunately I don't have a wide budget, otherwise this machine would have been more than perfect for the job.

My project is funded by a big company, but my budget is very limited.

Any less expensive counters?

Jaco

There are companies that hire out this type of equipment, so you might want to check with your local PALL, PARKER, UCC distributors. You also might want to check out Hiac (www.particle.com).

..Or even cheaper would be to send samples to a local lab.