Resumen

GROSSI, Marco  y  RICCO, Bruno. A portable instrument with disposable cells for in-situ measurements of viscosity in liquids. J. appl. res. technol [online]. 2018, vol.16, n.3, pp.170-176. ISSN 2448-6736.

Viscosity is a very important propery of liquids and its measure is mandatory for quality analysis in different insdutrial fields, such as food, paints, petroleum based products and cosmetics. Different types of viscometers exist that can measure fluis´viscosity with higth accuracy exploiting different phisycal principles, however these instruments are generaly laboratory based and not suitable for quick in-situ measurements by untrained personnel.

In this paper portable instrument for in-situ measumerent of liquids' viscosity is presented. The instrument is base don the falling ball principle and features a battery operated electronic board, an LCD display and a disposable cell for measurements on samples for which cleaning would be difficult and time consuming.

The instrument has been successfully tested by measuring the viscosity of tap water in the temperature range 15° -45 ° C and the viscosity of metalworking fluids in order to estimate oil concentration.

Palabras llave : viscosity; electronic instrument; embedded system; microcontroller; disposable; measurement.