Bio-lubricant Processing

Using bio-based oils and fats to lubricate moving parts is not new. For all of history, petroleum-based lubricants have dominated the market for only a short period of time (~100 yrs). Whale oil not only lit but also lubricated the American colonies.

Changing Compositions

Today, petroleum-based lubricants offer cost advantages, stability and enjoy universal acceptance. However, petroleum-based oils are not biodegradable and in one major market sector: total loss lubricants, this is a serious environmental issue. To address this issue numerous entrepreneurial companies have introduced bio-based lubricants consisting of petroleum base-oil and triglycerides (fats and oils) from renewable agricultural commodities.

Serving niche markets with their products, current bio-lubricant manufacturers have demonstrated that formulations of petroleum base oils, seed oils or animal fats and other common components of modern lubricants can be cost effective, environmentally safe and highly effective. Though still a minor segment of the global lubricant market, the future of bio-based lubricants will depend on overcoming the limitations of renewable triglyceride base oils. Quoting Leslie Rudnick: “Neat vegetable oils pose some problems…high viscosity, low volatility and polyunsaturation…which can be substantially reduced by subjecting the vegetable oils to …transesterification.” Rudnick is suggesting the introduction of alkyl fatty acid esters of high boiling alcohols.

New Materials

Benefuel’s ENSEL™ process affords for the first time a continuous, low cost and highly efficient means to transesterify triglyceride (vegetable oils and animal fats) with high boiling alcohols. Conventional processes, involving saponification followed by esterification or classical transesterification similar to biodiesel production, are incapable of providing alkyl monoesters at a cost to meet the lubricant market.

ENSEL can continuously transesterify any triglyceride with alcohols, straight-chain or branched, producing high quality alkyl fatty acid esters. Moreover, the by-product glycerin can also be alkylated to produce highly-branched polyethers as lubricant additives. These materials are already meeting the demands of lubricant formulators seeking to make their products ‘green’: lubricant base oils and additives from renewable commodities.

Future Benefits

It’s literally: “Back to the Future” with the ENSEL process. These new alkyl fatty acid esters in lubricant formulations for all segments of the lubricant market will be biodegradable, stable in all applications and priced competitively with lubricants based solely on petroleum base oils and petroleum-based synthetics. The Chart below offers a glimpse of what ENSEL is capable of providing the $8.0 billion worldwide lubricant industry.