Vacuum Oil Degasser

Co-op work at Apeiron Labs. Oil needs to be polished before use, meaning the dissolved gas and water vapor have to come out of it, or it causes problems down the line. This is a device to do that: it takes the oil, heats it, and recirculates it under vacuum until the impurities are gone.

Heat and vacuum both push dissolved gas and water out of solution, and recirculating means the oil keeps getting fresh exposure to the vacuum instead of only degassing at the surface of a still tank. The chamber sits on a hot plate, with a pump, a gauge, and a pair of ball valves on the lid.

Inside, the oil cascades down a stack of trays, which spreads it into thin films with a lot of surface area rather than letting it sit as a deep pool. That is what makes the degassing actually go anywhere.

Most of the work here was research. I had to figure out how oil polishing is done in the first place, then work through several concepts to land on something cheap but still effective.