ASTM International's committee on petroleum products, liquid fuels and lubricants recently developed a new standard to guide people who take samples from in-service gas and steam turbines and related equipment at power plants.
The new standard (D8112) aims to help reliability managers improve the value of existing oil analysis programs by making it easier to safely collect representative, repeatable samples that can be trended and acted upon as required.
"In-service fluid samples can be taken in a variety of ways that are not always representative of the active lubricating fluid," said Bernie Hall of Checkfluid Inc. "The new standard provides guidelines as to where and how to take best-practice samples that are both representative and repeatable in a turbine operation."
According to Hall, samples consistently collected from an "active zone" provide a strong basis for accurate reporting, trending and decision-making related to the equipment as well as the lubricant and hydraulic fluid within the equipment.
ASTM International also recently announced the addition of seven accreditations from the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA) for seven of its proficiency testing programs. The programs include automotive lubricant additives, diesel fuel, general gas oil, jet fuel, jet military fuel, naphtha and turbine oil.
The diesel fuel and jet fuel programs are two of ASTM International's largest, with nearly 500 and 350 participants, respectively. This brings the total number of programs that have achieved A2LA accreditation to 19, including automated transmission fluid, biodiesel and many more.
Programs accredited through A2LA are assessed against criteria from a key standard: Conformity Assessment – General Requirements for Proficiency Testing (ISO/IEC 17043:2010). A2LA is the only independent, internationally recognized accreditation body in the United States that offers a full range of comprehensive laboratory and laboratory-related accreditation services and training.
Approximately 4,100 laboratories use ASTM International's statistical quality assurance tools in the proficiency testing programs.
For more information, visit www.astm.org.
