Description

Fluid Analysis doesn’t end with the phasing out of the internal combustion engine (ICE). Indeed Electric Vehicles (EV) and hybrid machinery have an even stronger demand for fluid analysis than ever before. Your EV machinery still uses lubricants, insulating and cooling fluids, whilst your Hybrid has the additional complexity to monitor two propulsion systems.

Why test EV fluids?

EV fluids sometimes have conflicting requirements e.g. good wear protection for a transmission requiring additives that normally attack copper if at too high a concentration, but also good compatibility with copper electrical components. Equally, EV fluids need to be very thin, as range and efficiency are the key criteria in any EV, but because EV transmissions deliver maximum torque even at low speeds, a thicker film thickness of the lubricant is required. Hence it is a very fine balancing act these fluids need to play, with any disruption leading to

Battery Thermal Fluids (Dielectric fluids) – 100ml

There are two common types, one is a traditional coolant similar to typical engine glycol based coolants. These are all covered in our fluid analysis packages for engine coolants. However, there are also systems cooled with dielectric fluids similar to those seen in transformers powering your home and at power stations. Oil Analysis Laboratories, with a wealth of experience in monitoring these types of fluids has developed a custom test package for these dielectric fluids in batteries to handle lower volumes of fluid and different problems to your traditional electrical oil analysis.

Each sample comes with:

• Electrical Resistivity testing to confirm fluids’ electrical and conductive properties  and common contaminants such as:
  • Resistivity
  • Permittivity
  • Dissipation Factor/Tan Delta
  • Contamination testing for contaminants such as water, which at very low levels can start to have an effect on system performance.

You can also request enhanced suite options including:

• Elemental ICP and LubeWear – to aid identification of corrosion and wear to electrical contacts and copper components.
• Physical property testing such as viscosity @ 40’C
• Testing for adulteration with different oils e.g. hydraulic etc.

 

These suites are suite are ideal for machinery owners and operators, as well as OEMs for warranty investigations. For manufacturers of these products we also offer additional tests (quotation available on request) to meet full specifications but using larger volumes of oil including tests such as:

• Flash point
• Dielectric Breakdown
• Density
• Pour Point

You may also be interested in….

Hybrid Engine Oils

Hybrid engines and many non-hybrids with engine stop-start technology mean the number of startups where a high degree of wear occurs dramatically increases. On top of that repeated stop starts mean engines may not reach full temperatures for long during traffic, meaning problems such as condensation, which would normally boil off, are now something that needs to be monitored. Hence our regular lube oil analysis plans would certainly help you monitor the wear and water levels in your samples closely.

See our fluid analysis packages for these engine types.

Transmission fluids

Transmissions have to handle thinner lubricants with huge amounts of torque, meaning monitoring wear particles and knowing early if there is a problem is more important than ever. Every fluid analysis comes with our unique LubeWear analysis to identify wear early and whether it’s abnormal or not based on its size. Our wear analysis technology was designed with these types of systems in mind to identify the problems early to help keep you running.

See our fluid analysis packages for these oil types

Steering, brakes and wheel bearing fluids and greases

These remain fairly unchanged despite the transition to EV technologies, hence our regular lube oil and grease analysis plans will help you monitor these.

See our fluid analysis packages for these oil types