A review of the localization of oil testing equipment

A complete technical standard for petroleum products should not only have quality items and indicators that reflect its performance, but also be accompanied by corresponding test and inspection methods. The standardization of oil product testing methods requires various types of supporting instruments and equipment. Otherwise, the units implementing product technical standards use unstandardized testing instruments, and the test results are incomparable between units. Therefore, in the process of testing method standardization, the preparation of testing instruments must be given priority in principle to avoid unnecessary difficulties in the formulation process or release and implementation of testing method standards. About 70% of the international and foreign advanced standards adopted by oil product testing methods require corresponding testing instruments and equipment. Most of the oil product testing methods are conditional tests that simulate the performance of oil products. Therefore, most of the instruments and equipment required by oil product testing methods are special-purpose, followed by general physical and chemical analysis instruments used for testing other raw materials. Testing instruments and equipment are

the basis for the standardization of oil product testing methods. In the past, in order to establish a standardized system for oil product testing methods and accelerate the pace of adopting international and foreign advanced standards, it was noted that at the same time, a number of various oil product testing instruments and equipment manufactured by foreign manufacturers were introduced from different countries, but they could not meet the needs of various units implementing standards to implement standards and carry out tests. Since most of the oil testing instruments and equipment are special-purpose, the prices quoted by foreign manufacturers are very high. If they are imported in batches, a lot of foreign exchange will be spent. Therefore, in the initial stage of adopting international and foreign advanced standards for oil testing methods, how to solve the contradiction between the standardization of oil testing methods and the supply of required instruments and equipment has become the main problem in the standardization of petroleum products. It was unrealistic to rely entirely on imports to solve this problem at that time. This is because: ① It is impossible for the country to invest a lot of foreign exchange in oil testing; ② Even if oil testing instruments and equipment are imported, after a period of use, their parts will inevitably become non-standardized, and wearing parts will need to be constantly replenished. At that time, if we place orders from abroad again, due to the continuous development of processing technology and the modification of instruments and equipment, manufacturers will regard them as alternatives and process them separately, which is not only expensive but also has a long delivery time, resulting in the inability to continue to use an instrument and equipment; ③ Although the core components of the imported instruments have been standardized, their peripheral equipment has different technical lines adopted by different countries or even different companies in the same country, resulting in the lack of interchangeability of the instruments and equipment used for the same test method standard, which brings great trouble to the maintenance of instruments and equipment. Therefore, while adopting international and foreign advanced standards to formulate national and industry standards for oil product testing methods, whether the required special instruments and equipment (hereinafter referred to as specification instruments) can be based on the requirements of the test method standards, and the oil product processing, sales, use, inspection and other units can purchase domestic oil product testing specification instruments that meet the standard requirements at the same time as the test method standards are released. The issue has been placed on the work agenda of the product standardization management department.

In the early 1980s, after careful analysis, experts believed that as long as some specific and effective measures were taken through efforts, the localization of oil product testing specification instruments could be achieved. The specific measures determined at that time were: ① In the process of formulating the standardization plan and program for petroleum product testing methods, the principle of giving priority to the trial production of instruments with specifications required by the standards should be fully reflected, and full consideration should be given to providing prototypes and investing in standardization funds; ② The enthusiasm of oil product production plants, instrument manufacturers and relevant standard drafting units should be widely mobilized and exerted, and the feasibility of combining and cooperating with each other at different levels (large, medium and small enterprises) should be sought; ③ When arranging the trial production project of specification instruments, attention should be paid to the use of competition mechanism, and suitable enterprises should be selected through bidding in terms of completion time, trial production funds and quality requirements. Under the arrangement of the above principles, during the period of adopting international and foreign advanced standards for the standardization of oil product testing methods, especially the specification type, the trial production of specification instruments and the standardization of oil product testing methods were synchronized. Soon, a batch of specification instruments urgently needed by the standards of oil product testing methods that were independently trial-produced and imitated were put into mass production and put on the market after trial and product technical appraisal.

Since the localization of the required specification instruments was noticed at the beginning of the preparation of the standardization plan for oil product testing methods, after nearly 20 years of struggle and the cooperation and efforts of all parties, the oil product testing specification instruments have basically formed a production and supply system dominated by domestic instruments. Among the nearly 35 national and industry standards for oil product testing methods that have been issued, about 220 items are directly cited by oil product technical standards. This part is usually called the commonly used oil product testing methods, and the instruments used are also called the specification instruments for commonly used oil product testing. There are more than 130 varieties, of which nearly 125 have been localized, and the localization rate is 96%. Since the price of domestic oil product testing specification instruments is significantly lower than that of similar imported instruments (generally the price ratio is 1/5-1/4), it saves a lot of foreign exchange for the country every year.

In addition to following the above-mentioned principles to grasp the planning and coordination, there are also some specific practices worth summarizing, which can be summarized as a combination of the following 5 aspects.

1. Arrangement of instrument trial production units should pay attention to the combination of points and surfaces.

The specification instruments used in the oil product test method standard are technology-intensive products. Their characteristics are small batch production volume, high assembly difficulty, high trial production investment, high product cost, and manufacturers should have the adaptability to produce multiple varieties of instruments. In view of this feature, while adopting fixed-point development and production, we also find corresponding manufacturers to arrange trial production in a hierarchical manner according to the technical characteristics and production difficulty of the specification instruments. This combination of points and surfaces, and the simultaneous approach, overcomes the difficulties of urgently needing to trial produce multiple varieties of specification instruments for the adoption of international and foreign advanced standards nationwide. By giving full play to the different strengths of manufacturers, the progress of trial production of specification instruments has been accelerated, and the needs of establishing standards for various oil products (steam, coal, diesel, lubricant, asphalt, paraffin, liquefied petroleum gas, etc.) test methods have been met.

2. Pay attention to the close combination of trial production and trial use

. For a specification instrument used in a new oil product test method, in the process from principle prototype to prototype to product development, a trial stage within a certain range is indispensable. Only through trial use can conditions be created for the use of specification instruments and trial producers to increase contact, mutual understanding, and generate a common language. According to the operating procedures required by the test method standards, the trial users put forward improvement suggestions after using them together with foreign instruments. The trial manufacturers understand the use requirements in detail through on-site observation, improve the original design in a targeted manner, and adopt new technologies and new devices in a targeted manner to prevent detours in the trial production process. Generally, the specification instruments developed and produced through this combination can better meet the use requirements, and often have innovations. [page]

3 Properly handle the combination of trial production and introduction

. For those oil test specification instruments with small requirements and many processing technical difficulties, and key components that are difficult to process in instruments that affect the test precision or accuracy, imported equipment or accessories can be used to match them. This approach is not only from a technical perspective, but also depends on whether the investment made for processing is economically calculated. As for which method to use to match the oil test method standards, when arranging the trial production plan of specification instruments, it is necessary to make a comprehensive investigation and weighing, the purpose is to use limited foreign exchange to the best effect;

4 Connect the main unit and accessories

Almost all oil testing instruments involve a wide range of glass and instruments (referring to special thermometers and floats for oil testing, etc.). The immersion depth and verification requirements of the thermometer are different from those of general thermometers. There are also special regulations for the observation method of the float. These glass instruments and instruments are key accessories of the complete specification instrument. Therefore, the quality of a complete specification instrument is closely related to these accessories. Often, a set of related glass instruments or a thermometer does not meet the standard requirements or has poor accuracy, which leads to the test results of the entire specification instrument not meeting the standard requirements of the test method. Therefore, in the process of developing specification instruments, it is very important to pay attention to the development of glass instruments and instruments. For this purpose, a technical development cooperation network for glass instruments, instruments, and porcelain utensils for petroleum product test methods was specially established, which attracted domestic manufacturers with a long history of producing glass instruments and instruments and strong technical strength to participate in the trial production and production of core accessories for oil testing specification instruments. With the close cooperation of the technical development cooperation network, except for the glass capillary column used for the determination of gasoline group composition by fluorescence chromatography, which is still under development, all the glass instruments and meters supporting the oil product testing instruments are basically based in China. Some products, such as the mercury alloy thermometer for testing low temperature performance, were adopted by the standards earlier than those abroad. Another example is that the quality of the special-shaped flat glass test tube used to observe the corrosion phenomenon of copper sheets for determining the corrosion performance of oil products has reached the level of similar foreign products.

5. Do a good job in the combination of manual and automatic instrument trial production.

In view of the unique advantages of the automatic operation of oil product testing instruments, foreign oil companies and instrument manufacturers have already considered the research of automatic specification instruments as the focus of development in the past 20 years, and have successively launched a batch of products on the market. The main reason why it is welcomed by customers is that after the automatic operation is realized, one experimenter can operate multiple instruments at the same time, saving manpower; second, because the instrument is automated, there is no need for face-to-face operation between man and machine, which reduces the pollution to the environment and protects the health of the operator; third, the instrument operates automatically according to the standard procedure, reducing human errors and improving the test accuracy. From the analysis of the development process of automation of foreign oil product testing specification instruments, it can be roughly divided into two stages. The first stage is to simulate the test conditions specified in the test method standard and automate the manual operation steps; the second stage is the "starting from scratch" method that has developed rapidly in recent years, that is, to develop new instruments as the core and edit new test method standards separately. Although the test method has changed, the results of new oil performance measured by the new instrument must be directly or indirectly converted to be basically consistent with the results measured by the classical method (but there are also automated instruments developed for some new characteristics of oil products, which are discussed separately). Noting the development trend of automated specification instruments in the world and the necessity of developing domestic automated specification instruments, how to raise the manufacturing level of oil product testing specification instruments in my country to a new platform, while arranging the localization of manual specification instruments, pay attention to combining them with the research and development of automated instruments from the beginning of product development planning, arrange qualified oil refining enterprises to be responsible for research and development, and ask instrument manufacturers with requirements to jointly undertake, and create necessary conditions in terms of funding, trial, promotion, etc. So far, more than ten kinds of commonly used and characteristic automatic specification instruments suitable for national conditions, such as distillation, kinematic viscosity, various flash points, saturated vapor pressure, various oxidation tests, have been launched into the market. Therefore, the variety and processing level of automatic oil testing instruments are not too different from those in the international market. Of course, the domestic automatic specification instruments currently seen on the market are only at the previous stage of international development. As for the production of automatic specification instruments for setting test method standards, it is still necessary for all parties to continue to cooperate and make new contributions.

In summary, it is not difficult to see that the specification instruments for oil testing have basically been based on the domestic market and meet the needs in terms of variety and quantity. Some varieties still need to be improved and improved in terms of quality or shape. This is mainly due to the small production batch, which meets the market demand and has no continuous demand, so it is impossible to invest in quality improvement. Summarizing the past and looking forward to the future, although certain achievements have been made in the localization of specification instruments for oil testing, the following aspects should be paid attention to for future development:

⑴ Improve the variety of specification instruments used for the standardized oil testing methods. For example, some products are difficult to manufacture and have no supporting products; some products may not have a large market at present, but in the long run, manufacturers should prepare for technology and trial production early.

⑵ Improve and enhance the quality level of the oil test specification instruments currently in production. When modifying or reproducing, attention should be paid to the use of new technologies and the timely application of new devices in many aspects.

⑶ Accelerate the research and development of automated specification instruments, which should include: ① For the currently commonly used, large-scale and wide-ranging manual specification instruments, make preparations for automation or semi-automation as soon as possible to reduce the workload of experimental personnel and create a good environment to reduce pollution; ② For the automation methods of the oil test method standards (including international and foreign advanced standards), carry out targeted research and development (i.e., those adopted by product standards) to adapt to the transformation of product test method standards; ③ Combined with the new oil test methods developed by ourselves, design and develop new oil test specification instruments suitable for national conditions.