SECTOR FOCUS: BASE OILS
Alternative industrial plant oils coming of age in Australia
Dr. Lou A. Honary, President, Environmental Lubricants Manufacturing, Inc
Australia’s new variety of safflower oil technology is an example of how the future of biobased industrial products could look like. The safflower oil produced under a patented technology by GO Resources offers over 93% oleic acid content; by far the highest levels ever for a mass-produced crop oil; with the ultra-high oleic sunflower oil offering close to the same levels of oleic acid content. The significance of this new technology is that its developers are not only commercialising the oil produced from this plant, they also intend on licensing the seeds to other countries for planting and growth.
“Industrial Crops” are expected to change the landscape in the future, making them mainstream products.
Industrial crops are generally considered crops that have no food value although their meals could potentially be used as animal feed. The book Biobased Lubricants and Greases: Technology and Products, by this author lists several industrial crops and their potential use for industrial lubricants and machinery grease.
In the United States the members of the Associations for Advancements of Industrial Crops (AAIC) are focused on research and development of crops that could be obscure and unique to specific regions of the world but would contain oils suitable for fuel, lubricants, and other industrial and pharmaceutical applications. The association was originally formed to expand the uses of Guayule (pronounced Wa Yu Lee) which is known for its use as natural rubber.
Figure 1: Australia’s Safflower with High Oleic Acid Content
Vegetable oil-based lubricants have about 40 years of R&D behind them but still lag the conventional mineral oil technology by a century. Since most early base-plant-oils for industrial lubricants were extracted from rapeseed, canola, soybean and sunflower oils, questions persisted about the viability of supplies in the face of growing needs for food, feed, and machinery lubricants. While edible oils as base-oil for industrial lubricants laid the foundation of the biobased lubricants technology, the use of non-food
30 LUBE MAGAZINE NO.170 AUGUST 2022
Figure 2: Parthenium argentatum – guayule. Source:
https://davesgarden.com/ (downloaded ay 1, 2022).
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