Eideard

It has been estimated that over 8 billion US gallons of used motor oil are produced every year by the world’s cars and trucks. While some of that is re-refined into new oil or burned in furnaces for heat, neither of those processes are entirely environmentally-innocuous. In other cases, it is simply discarded. Today, however, researchers from the University of Cambridge announced the development of a process that uses microwaves to convert waste oil into vehicle fuel.

Scientists have already been using a process known as pyrolysis for recycling oil. It involves heating the oil to a high temperature in the absence of oxygen, and causes the oil to break down into a mixture of gases, liquids, and solids. While the gases and liquids can be converted to fuel, the Cambridge scientists state that traditional pyrolysis doesn’t heat the oil very evenly, making the fuel conversion process difficult and impractical.

What they did, however, was to add a microwave-absorbent material to samples of waste oil, before subjecting it to pyrolysis by heating it with microwaves. The addition of the material caused the oil to heat more evenly, allowing almost 90 percent of it to easily be converted into a mixture of conventional gasoline and diesel.

Another step forward presented this week at the meeting of the American Chemical Society. Great news.

[I actually know someone who is a member of that body. I must ask him if he attended?]

NIST materials scientists Dan Fischer and Cherno Jaye

Titanium, a protean element with applications from pigments to aerospace alloys, could get a new role as an environmentally friendly additive for automotive oil, thanks to work by materials scientists from Afton Chemical Corporation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Researchers have established that a titanium compound added to engine oil creates a wear-resistant nanoscale layer bound to the surface of vulnerable engine parts, making it a credible substitute for older compounds that do not coexist well with antipollution equipment.

For years antiwear additives for high-performance oils have been phosphorous compounds, especially ZDPP, that work by forming a polyphosphate film on engine parts that reduces wear. Unfortunately phosphorus is a chemical poison for automobile catalytic converters, reducing their effectiveness and life span, so industry chemists have been searching for ways to replace or reduce the use of ZDDP.

Titanium is one candidate replacement. Mechanical tests of an organic titanium compound at Afton demonstrated that it provided superior wear resistance when added to a fully formulated engine oil, suggesting that oil chemists could use less ZDDP.

Measurements revealed that the antiwear enhancement comes from titanium chemically bound into the metal structure of the engine surface, forming a hard oxide, iron titanate…While considerably more work remains to be done, the results suggest that titanium could play an important role in future low-phosphorus lubricating oils.

Bravo! And an excellent example of profit and non-profit cooperative research.