At the heart of oil analysis is a spectrometer. It is the machine that allows us to quantify wear metals, additives, and contaminants in oils, making oil analysis a useful service in predicting potential problems in engines and machines of all types.

A spectrometer can be aimed at a star to determine what elements may exist in the star, if all the star’s light is being generated by the star (rather than reflected off the star). Spectrometry works on the same principle, but we have to first create the light. We do this by converting the actual oil into light energy. This is done by injecting the oil into something called plasma. You can think of plasma as a flame, since it looks like a green flame. But plasma is much hotter than a normal flame, and it needs to be in order to do its work. The plasma we use has a temperature of about 10,000° C. Plasma is actually the highest state of energy (the states of energy being solid, liquid, gas, and plasma).

Inductive coupled plasma, known in the trade as ICP, works by converting argon gas into plasma. So long as the argon pressures and flow rates don’t change, and the power causing the plasma’s generation is steady, the intensity of the plasma stays the same. This gives ICP spectrometry the industry gold star for incredible accuracy.