Recycling and Reusing Aspect of Green Circular Economy to Overcome Engineering and Environmental Challenges

Abstract

The environmental issues of mineral oil-based drilling muds and additives in spite of their excellent technical performance such as good lubricity and high wear protection characteristics and the technical issues of water-based drilling muds such as the poor lubricity and wear resistance characteristics in spite of their excellent environmental traits require the development of high performance water-based drilling muds to overcome the current as well as the future drilling engineering and other oil and gas field challenges. Hence, several value-added green products have been developed adopting the recycling and reusing aspect of green circular economy of waste cook oil (WCO) to develop eco-friendly fluid additives and demonstrate their applications to explore and exploit oil and gas resources without any damage to the terrestrial, coastal and the marine environments and the ecosystems. Analyses of technical performance of the WCO derived green products with respect to the equivalent commercial products indicate similar or superior technical performance with the added benefit of no environmental impact. Hence, the recycling and reusing of the WCO provide a sustainable circular economical route for ecofriendly product development to overcome the technical and the environmental challenges simultaneously. It also provides a potential avenue for the growth and development of local, regional, national and global industries and infrastructures, development and creation of new job opportunities for the local, regional and the global communities, especially in developing and under-developed countries to create a positive societal and economic impact. Although this paper highlights mainly the oil and gas industry applications, WCO has huge potential for other industrial applications to overcome the technical problems without any negative environmental consequences. It can be used as a sustainable raw material for the development of a large variety of value-added green chemicals and polymers such as plasticizers, binders, surfactants, eco-greases, biopolymers, etc for other industrial applications. The renewable, sustainable and locally available source of the raw material have high potential to bring long-term stability to the oil and gas field additive supply chain for continuous and uninterrupted drilling and production operation. The paper highlights the applications of several WCO-based value-added products to overcome the technical and environmental challenges faced by the oil and gas industry.