Ecologically Benign Lubricants – Evaluation From a Life Cycle Perspective

Abstract

Using mineral oil based coolants for the machining of metals causes environmental problems. Besides plant seed oil, animal fat and used cooking oil proved to be raw material sources for alternative ester based coolants which can be used as substitutes for mineral oil. In this paper their properties are compared from a life cycle perspective with those of mineral oil and plant seed oil ester products regarding technical, ecological and economical aspects. In this context grinding tests, Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing were performed. The three disciplines are brought together in a material flow model and, therefore, results are well harmonized.

Technological evaluation of a novel glycerol based biocide-free metalworking fluid

“…The consistency strategy can be applied through the use of ecological benign MWFs. In this case, alternative MWFs can be formulated using biopolymers (Herrmann et al, 2007;Herrmann and Zein, 2010) vegetable oils (Brenneis et al, 2006;Cetin et al, 2011;Winter et al, 2012), or animal fat (Dettmer, 2004;Bock, 1996;Wichmann and Bahadir, 2007).…”

Thumba (<em>Citrullus colocynthis</em> L.) seed oil: a potential bio-lubricant base-stock

“…It was observed that the polyol esters exhibited good viscosity indices and lower pour points (−18 °C to −3 °C). 2-Ethylhexyl esters are widely used as coolants and lubricants for the machinization of metals and for drilling oils (Berthezene et al, 1999;May et al, 2005;Herrmann et al, 2007) and Asadauskus and Erhan (Asadauskas and Erhan, 1999) used such esters to improve the pour point properties of the bio-lubricant, and for allowing their use as addi tives.…”

Environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) of lubricants

“…Herrmann et al [38] compared mineral oil (Variocut G500, Castrol), and methyl and 2-ethylhexyl esters of plant oils (PMO, RSO), animal fat, and used cooking oil for use as lubricants in cooling applications by evaluating the technical, ecological and economical aspects involved in production of these materials. Again, the cheap mineral oil has the highest impacts on GWP, carcinogenic effects (CE), CED, photochemical smog (PS) and abiotic resource depletion (RD) (see Table 11.1), and has the potential to cause most harm to the environment.…”

“…Comprehensive life-cycle comparisons of lubricants are rather few (see Table 11.1) and concern particular application areas such as hydraulic equipment for forestry applications [33][34][35] and municipal cleaning [33], chainsaws [35], domestic refrigerators [36], metalworking [37,38], re-refi ned products [39,40] and engine oils [41]. LCAs can be used as a basis for improvement of the various stages in development of lubricants.…”