Systems and methods to detect and measure materials in oil

A method of measuring concentrations of at least one ion in an oil mixture comprising oil potentially containing at least one ion and at least one photo-responsive chemical that changes at least one optical property in the presence of at least one ion in oil, the method comprising;

• receiving the at least one optical property from the at least one photo-responsive chemical;
• converting the at least one optical property into a value representing an ion concentration in the oil mixture;
• and
• transmitting a signal or data comprising the value.

A method of measuring condition of a mechanical system comprising:

• combining data in at least one additional mechanical system capable of measuring concentration of materials in oil with other parameters of the mechanical system, wherein the other parameters comprise:
• first mechanical system operating parameters since last oil change;
• original oil quality;
• and
• first mechanical system current and historic load and operating conditions;
• implementing statistical learning algorithms configured to learn typical oil or machine degradation patterns for a specific mechanical system type to determine mechanical system-specific oil drain histories;
• and
• employing the mechanical system-specific oil drain histories to optimize subsequent oil drain intervals for the first mechanical system.