Developing a machine integrated lube oil analysis system

Reliability and availability of shipping vessels is critical to quality of life and impacts significantly on cost of goods consumed globally. This is because the maritime industry is responsible for 90% of global trade, hence disruptions in maritime service impacts the way we live and how much we pay for our goods. Until now, it has been difficult to predict with any certainty machinery failure in shipping vessels. This has resulted in high rate of failure in rotating lubricated machinery such as engines. The high rate of marine engine failure is the leading cause of service disruptions in the maritime industry. However, such disruptions could be avoided with early detection of engine faults ensuring that engine failure is prevented.

Diagnosing early, potential failure of marine lubricated equipment such as engines is critical to operation of a shipping vessel. RAB-Microfluidics has developed cutting edge microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technology to deliver real-time continuous testing and analysis of lubricating oil. Our "Lab-on-a-Chip" technology delivers oil analysis 1000x faster and 10x cheaper than the current "send the sample to the Laboratory" approach. Analysis of contaminants in engine oil, gearboxes, etc. is a well-established method of detecting problems. This procedure is called Oil Condition Monitoring. We deliver this onsite, in real time and this is a significant improvement on the current practice of sending the sample to onshore laboratories for analysis thus saving cost and improving machinery reliability and vessel availability. We combine our hardware technology with data computing by developing machine learning capabilities to utilise the big data generated from our hardware. This offers real-time continuous monitoring, early problem diagnosis, rapid decision making, enhanced efficiency and cost savings.

This project seeks to develop this core technology further and build a field prototype demonstrator that integrates with a live operational marine engine. This will ensure we fully demonstrate the automation of our novel Oil Condition Monitoring process. This will be a first-of-its-kind development with potential to dramatically improve shipping vessel reliability and availability by ensuring developing faults of key equipment are identified early. If successful, our technology will herald a game changer for the maritime sector and would invariably have a ripple effect on our quality of life by ensuring reduced marine service disruptions. There is also the added possibility of such success being reflected on the cost of good we consumed due to lower marine transportation costs.