Testing the Oil Testing Kit: identifying a "somewhat unknown" sample
Jeffrey Warren
I just posted a research note on 'Testing the Oil Testing Kit: identifying a "somewhat unknown" sample':
Read and respond to the post here: http://publiclab.org/notes/warren/07-14-2015/testing-the-oil-testing-kit-identifying-a-somewhat-unknown-sample
I finally made time to test @mathew's prototype Oil Testing Kit attachment for the Public Lab Spectrometer v3.0, and here are my results.
The basic procedure I followed was:
- prepare all provided samples
- scan each one
- choose an "unknown" from them, prepare in the same way
- compare to known samples to try to figure out what the unknown is
This went well, although not perfectly. We'd expected that we'd be able to tell crude oil from diesel and various motor oils, but that distinguishing motor oils might be difficult. But our eventual goal is to distinguish crude oil from other petroleum types as well as from other kinds of false positives.
The knowns
I generally followed the steps outlined in @mathew's original test, which predates the new OTK attachment. The attachment made this test much much easier, but there were still a few hiccups. I began by scanning each of the provided samples, pictured above. They are, in order of "weight":
- Diesel fuel
- 5W30 oil
- 20W50 oil
- 80W90 oil
- North Dakota crude oil (from ONTA)
Full note here: http://publiclab.org/notes/warren/07-14-2015/testing-the-oil-testing-kit-identifying-a-somewhat-unknown-sample