An innovative method to reduce oil waste using a sensor made of recycled material to evaluate engine oil life in automotive workshops

In this work, a capacitive sensor made of recycled material is proposed to monitor oil quality in automotive workshops in order to reduce the waste of useful lubricant oil caused by shorter periods of use than those established by the manufacturers. The sensor was fabricated from a recycled aluminum heat sink and used to measure the permittivity of oil samples. The proposed method was compared with Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy analysis to evaluate degradation parameters, as described in standard practice ASTM E-2412. The obtained results showed good agreement between both techniques, validating the use of the proposed sensor to evaluate oil condition. The use of permittivity measurements could be used to evaluate oil quality in an easier, faster, and economical way compared with other laboratory tests.