Copper in UOA

[beanoil]

I've gotten interested in this topic lately.
I've looked at many UOA, and noticed that some oils will show a higher concentration of copper than others.
There may even be several UOA that show low copper, then a brand change will be made, and copper spikes.
This may explain some of it.
I have assumed it would apply to PCMO as well.
Copper study

 

[KGMtech]

I had 2 oil analysis on my Maxima, the copper was very high for a relatively new engine. Blackstone suggested it was due to cu leaching from oil cooler - nothing to worry about. I will eventually get another UOA done, but I'm in no rush.

Thanks for the link, I will keep using the PP 5W30 to avoid upsetting the pacifying varnish layer in the cooler.

 

[Linctex]

QUOTE:

"If copper associated with wear is suspected, perhaps it is best to prepare a filtergram and perform a microscopic analysis of the particles. Because copper suspensions from cooler core leaching and coolant leaks are soluble or the associated copper particulates are smaller than 1 micron, they likely won't appear on the membrane for microscopic analysis. Only the copper from wear will be visible, which is helpful in distinguishing the source."

This is why UOA's are often useless - - - "wear particles" are way, way, way, way, way too large to be ionized in a spectrographic machine

 

[Donald]

And first you need to verify if the engine has an oil cooler. Most do not.

If no oil cooler then likely a bearing,

 

[StevieC]

On the PentaStar engines they have an Oil to Coolant heat exchanger and it leaches copper for a long long time. I think it also shows up in the EcoDiesels by FCA as well.

This is where the lab universal averages help because it might be alarming for some engines but not others like the PentaStar for example. Trending multiple reports also helps.

 

[HangFire]

Originally Posted by Linctex

QUOTE:

"If copper associated with wear is suspected, perhaps it is best to prepare a filtergram and perform a microscopic analysis of the particles. Because copper suspensions from cooler core leaching and coolant leaks are soluble or the associated copper particulates are smaller than 1 micron, they likely won't appear on the membrane for microscopic analysis. Only the copper from wear will be visible, which is helpful in distinguishing the source."

This is why UOA's are often useless - - - "wear particles" are way, way, way, way, way too large to be ionized in a spectrographic machine

Thank you for digging that quote up. The interpretation is the other way around, I think.

The spectographic machine will catch both sizes, but not distinguish between them. The filtergram and microscopic analysis will display the larger wear particles only, but not give any indication of soluble or sub-micron copper.

 

[MolaKule]

Another reason why that in Fluid Analysis one needs an idea of the composition of the metal and metal alloys in a component in order to determine whether or not one should get excited.

 

[udidwht]

This is pretty typical of BBC engines. It will go up then go down overtime. Normal.