Patent ID: 7763850

Claim:
A method for determining oil consumption coming from an oil separation system located in a circuit for recycling blowby gases of an internal combustion engine, comprising: labeling the lubricating oil for said internal combustion engine by introducing at least one radioactive tracer into said lubricating oil; passing the blowby gases, leaving the engine block and laden with lubricating oil, through the oil separation system, wherein at least some of the oil contained within said blowby gases is separated, collected and returned to an oil sump; subsequently bringing the blowby gases coming from the oil separation system to an oil trapping device located downstream of said oil separation system, whereby the oil not separated from the blowby gases coming from the oil separation system is retained in the oil trapping device; measuring the radioactivity of the oil retained in the oil trapping device by using a detector, which is placed near the oil trapping device and is sensitive to the ionizing radiation emitted by the radioactive tracer(s); and transmitting the results of these measurements to a computer capable of calculating the consumption of lubricating oil not separated in said separation system from these results.