How much is a million parts of engine oil?

[Bryanccfshr]

Originally Posted by klt1986
So, if you have a UOA completed and you have 60 PPM of aluminum show up in the report (or whatever wear metal you want to insert here), what does this tell you? For the sake of the argument here, lets say it is a 5 quart sump. I'd be interested in seeing a formula on how to figure this.


We could go by weight. It wouldn't be hard to figure out 32 oz a qt so5x32= 160 oz I won't do the scientific conversions for different molecular weights for a quick internet post.

60 ppm is .00006

.00006 x160 =.0096 oz in the sump convert to grams since I am doing English let's comvert to rounder numbers of grams= .0096x28.3495
=.2721552 gramsx1000 = 272 mg. I am rounding here because I am too lazy to do elemental density and convert.

For a visual think of one ibuprofen tablet of 400 mg. This is probably a mass of "aluminum" a little less than half of that in size due to density. This mass is suspended in the 5 qts of oil during operation.


I am not a wizard at this so if I made a gross error or missed a zero let me know.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by burla
So cut and dry, how many million parts of oil are in a qrt?

LOL!

I don't think you're getting it. It's not about the actual number of parts. "Parts" is just a figure of speech. In reality, there are no "parts" there. There are only molecules made up of atoms.

PPM is just a ratio. It does not refer to any specific quantity. Just like % alone does not tell you anything about the actual quantity. We could be using % instead of PPM to describe results on a UOA, but it would result in a lot of zeros having to be printed because the numbers are so small. So that's why it's more convenient to represent the results as PPM instead.

 

[oil_film_movies]

Originally Posted by burla
So cut and dry, how many million parts of oil are in a qrt? if soemone knows. I inderstand about the variables and density, but just an aprx random shelf oil.

Do you mean the base oil ? As opposed to the rest which is additives like ZDDP, moly, boron, etc.?
Base oil makes up around 90% of a quart of oil, including the diluents in the DI (detergent-inhibitor) addtive package itself, which is made of oil.
...90% is the same as saying 900,000 ppm.

 

[oil_film_movies]

Originally Posted by klt1986
So, if you have a UOA completed and you have 60 PPM of aluminum show up in the report (or whatever wear metal you want to insert here), what does this tell you? For the sake of the argument here, lets say it is a 5 quart sump. I'd be interested in seeing a formula on how to figure this.


Formula: Density of Motor Oil x Volume of Motor Oil x ppm of Aluminum / (1,000,000 ppm/sump)
876 kg/m3 x (1,000 grams/kg) x (0.035274 oz/gram) x (0.000946353 m3/qt) x 5 qts x 60 ppm Aluminum /1,000,000
876 x 1,000 x 0.035274 x 0.000946353 x 5 x 60 / 1,000,000 = 0.0087 oz of Aluminum running around in the sump in a wanton manner.

 

[cristo]

1 ppm is about 1 drop per 50 quarts (or about 1 drop in a 12 or 13 gallon tank of gas)

 

[blupupher]

nevermind...

 

[kschachn]

Remember too that showing up on an ICP analysis tells you nothing about the character of the presence of the metal. It could be small detectable "shavings" of aluminum or it could be tiny and harmless particles down to the atomic level. ICP is very sensitive to tiny particles but insensitive to relatively larger ones.

 

[JTK]

I like to boil it down to 1% = 10000ppm.

 

[klt1986]

Whew....math/algebra never was not my strongest suit in college

...although I did well and had a good understanding of probability and statistics.

 

[burla]

So wether it is a qrt, liter, gallon, 55 gallon drum, they still measure additives in ppm. So if you say a qrt is a million parts and moly is 60ppm, then 32/1,000,000 x 60. So if that was true, 60ppm moly would be .00192 of an ounce. If it was a gallon that was a million parts 128/1,000,000 x 60 you get a different result. That cannot be the truth, there has to be x amount of ppm in a qrt and it cannot be 1,000,000 unless when they put their product on different containers they still "mean" ppm is relative to quarts, but they never say this. So does any oil measure their "dose" in anything other then ppm, do any oil say their additives as a percentage of base oil or an actual measurement free from the constraints of ppm? That would answer the question as well.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by burla
That cannot be the truth, there has to be x amount of ppm in a qrt and it cannot be 1,000,000 unless when they put their product on different containers they still "mean" ppm is relative to quarts, but they never say this. So does any oil measure their "dose" in anything other then ppm, do any oil say their additives as a percentage of base oil or an actual measurement free from the constraints of ppm? That would answer the question as well.

Again, ppm is like a percentage or a ratio. It's a percentage of the whole, not a percentage of base oil. Instead of writing 60 ppm, you could alternatively write it as 0.006%.

For example, this Valvoline product sheet shows you how much additive is in their oil, and it is expressed in ppm:
https://sharena21.springcm.com/Publ...bd3/3aa410a1-0bbd-e711-9c12-ac162d889bd1

The size of the container is irrelevant. If you know the ratio (ppm), then you can calculate out the actual amount based on the size of the container.

 

[kschachn]

Also ppm is the way it's typically measured by analytical equipment. Whether or not a blender blends the oil using that ratio is up to them.

The testing equipment usually doesn't know the total volume of your sample, only an instantaneous measurement of what is being processed. That's why it's reported as a ratio.

 

[burla]

Thanks everyone for your patience, I wanted to double check so I contacted a oil manu, or blender whatever...

Burla,

500ppm is equivalent to 0.05%

0.05% of 32 ounces is 0.016 ounces

Regards,
Dave Granquist

Amazingly simple, so I feel amazingly stupid on this one...

 

[oil_film_movies]

Originally Posted by burla
Thanks everyone for your patience, I wanted to double check so I contacted a oil manu, or blender whatever...

Burla,

500ppm is equivalent to 0.05%

0.05% of 32 ounces is 0.016 ounces

Regards,
Dave Granquist

Amazingly simple, so I feel amazingly stupid on this one...



Wrong, because ppm refers to mass, not volume. Your quarts and ounces are volumes, not mass.
My post above used the density of oil to convert to mass. Whatever pleases you the most though..

 

[ZeeOSix]

Originally Posted by oil_film_movies
Originally Posted by burla
Thanks everyone for your patience, I wanted to double check so I contacted a oil manu, or blender whatever...

Burla,

500ppm is equivalent to 0.05%

0.05% of 32 ounces is 0.016 ounces

Regards,
Dave Granquist

Amazingly simple, so I feel amazingly stupid on this one...



Wrong, because ppm refers to mass, not volume. Your quarts and ounces are volumes, not mass.
My post above used the density of oil to convert to mass. Whatever pleases you the most though..


It's not always expressed as a mass to mass ratio.

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ppm-d_1039.html

 

[oil_film_movies]

ZeeOSix, I thought we were talking about oil additive concentrations here. Other applications foreign to this discussion may use other definitions, yes, adding to the confusion.

Your "dimensionless" point is true. Your example of pollution works OK when all is a gas, the same state.

In an oil analysis, a VOA or UOA, the mass fraction is determined by spectrographic tools.

Also, it makes no sense to compare liquid volume ounces or quarts of solid matter MOS2 or ZDDP or any solid additive, to a volume.