5.1 Lubricating oils are formulated with organo-metallic additives, which act, for example, as detergents, antioxidants, antifoaming, or antiwear agents, or a combination thereof. Some of these additives contain one or more of the following elements: magnesium, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, calcium, zinc, and molybdenum. This test method provides a means of determining the concentrations of these elements, which in turn provides an indication of the additive content of these oils.
5.3 This test method is primarily intended to be used for the monitoring of additive elements in lubricating oils.
5.4 If this test method is applied to lubricating oils with matrices significantly different from the calibration materials specified in this test method, the cautions and recommendations in Section 6 should be observed when interpreting the results.
1.1 This test method covers the quantitative determination of additive elements in unused lubricating oils and additive packages, as shown in Table 1. The pooled limit of quantitation of this test method as obtained by statistical analysis of interlaboratory test results is 0.02% for magnesium, 0.003 % for phosphorus, 0.002 % for sulfur, 0.001 % for chlorine, 0.003 % for calcium, 0.001 % for zinc, and 0.002 % for molybdenum.