Hello!
I am one of the engineers that built the Oilyzer product. Just wanted to share some information about the Oilyzer and would love to answer any questions you have about the product.
The Oilyzer works on the basic principles of capacitive sensing (the same stuff that goes into your Iphone touchscreens, laptop touchpads etc.). We basically detect the quality of oil by measuring the dielectric of the oil sample. The quality of your oil is affected by many factors some of which are mentioned below.
At the moment, most car manufacturers have different ways of sensing the quality of oil in your car. My own car simply has a 15000 mile countdown from the last oil change which I never trust. Some new cars have a predictive method in which there isn't actually a sensor that checks the quality of your oil but a computer algorithm determines it based on data it collects on your driving habits, temperature, average speed. Our product is more closely related to sensing the TBN (total base number) of the oil under test. As oil becomes more acidic due to friction, temperature, pressure, suspended contaminants etc, the TBN value changes, and is a very reliable indicator of oil quality.
Optical or Photoelectric sensing has been used in the past to gauge the viscosity and opacity of oil, but has been proven to be unreliable and is not a technology used in the "Oilyzer" product. The combined capacitive and resistive aspects of measuring oil health or quality determines acidity, viscosity and contaminants (metal particulates, soot, dirt, coolant, water) with the exception of gasoline. The Oilyzer is able to capture most of the information regarding the "TBN" of oil when compared to a high end spectroscopy, flash and chemical based tests. It is a scientific and technologically reliable indicator when measured against subjective human based test methods (based on the color of oil or driving mileages).
There is a plethora of scientific information on the web and in scientific journals or on SAE.org supporting the premise for reducing the number of unnecessary oil changes (replacements) and to extend driving distances based on TBN and other factors related to scientific measurement rather than by subjective means.
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/UsedOil/OilChange/
http://www.nordicgroup.us/oil.htm
http://money.blogs.time.com/2009/09/08/the...il-change-myth/
www.sae.org keywords engine "oil dielectric longevity"
Personally we are not interested in forcing users to go 15,000 miles or more without an oil change, however we do have a safety factor added to the product to ensure that the product is conservative in its estimates and warns you way ahead of time before you destroy your engine! We are only interested in getting the user to buy a product that tells you on a scale of 1 to 10, the quality of your oil. We believe we are empowering the user to check their oil whenever they please and decide for themselves what they want to do. One can choose to change their oil after the Oilyzer lights up LED4 (assuming good driving conditions, fully synthetic oil that has run 5K miles on a clean engine) or they can wait for LED8 (orange indicator, about 9K on a clean engine using synthetic oil). But it is true that in general most people do change their oil more often than necessary which is based on the 3000 mile myth that came about in the post world war II era. Engine manufacturing has improved by leaps since then and does not require the same 3K oil change regime but then again it is totally up to the car owner to determine what they are comfortable with.
Feedback or comments are greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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- OilyzerMan