Is a Digital Probe Better than a Mercury Thermometer for Petroleum Tests?

The mercury thermometer is still the standard device to measure temperature in many manual petroleum tests such as flash point, distillation, viscosity and cold property tests but there are a number of reasons for changing to a digital probe; safety, more reliable and repeatable results and better workflow or data tracking support.

Mercury is toxic to humans and because of environmental and safety regulations, shipping these thermometers has become increasingly complicated in many countries. Digital probes are safe and easy to handle.

The temperature measurement from a mercury thermometer relies on human interpretation which has a direct impact on the reproducibility of results. The use of a digital probe eliminates the operator bias or any possible human error factors and offers more accurate and repeatable results.

A digital probe provides digital data, which can be easily exported to data handling software (LIMS).

ORBIS BV (the Netherlands) are currently developing AirProbe, a small device that clips onto a digital probe, and wirelessly connects to a smart interface (e.g. Apple iPod).

The easy-to-use software app provides full reports that include temperature,time data and even volume point data for semi automatic distillation tests.

AirProbe can be combined with multiple probes for the various test applications, and multiple AirProbes can be connected to one interface in a network configuration. 

ORBIS BV welcomes comments, questions and suggestions from readers of Petro Industry News.