BASE OILS
Estolide Technology: Sustainable base oils & additives
For the past several years, industry has been exploring safer, readily biodegradable, and non-toxic fluids. The benefits of environmental lubricants are well known. Biodegradable properties allow them to break down in the environment reducing the negative impact from leaks and spills. Non-toxic properties mean they will not harm humans, animals or plants that come in contact with the fluid. Biosynthetic oils offer these benefits plus they are palm-free, and they grow from sustainable plant-based sources that produce yearly crops from responsible farming practices. Furthermore, they are renewable and reduce dependence on petroleum oil.
The limitations of vegetable oils as base stocks for lubricants are well known: poor oxidative and hydrolytic stability, poor cold temperature performance and incompatibility with elastomers. Biosynthetic®
Julia Austin, Senior Research Chemist, and Dr. Marlon Lutz, Process Chemist, Biosynthetic Technologies
improved anti-wear or extreme pressure protection. For these reasons, the class of estolide compounds have near limitless potential as a specialty chemical in the lubricant industry when biodegradability and superior performance are of key importance.
Currently, Biosynthetic Technologies commercially offers four grades of base oil offering high biobased content, low toxicity, and are readily biodegradable.
Table 1: Commercially Available Estolides offered by Biosynthetic Technologies
Technologies estolides have resolved these early issues by derivatising functionalised monomers of vegetable oils. Their structure contains fatty acid repeat units, with secondary ester linkages on the alkyl backbone.
These base oils have excellent lubricity and load carrying characteristics that offer oxidative, hydrolytic, and shear stability. Additionally, they have low evaporative loss and have good demulsibility.
Figure 1: Example Structure of an Estolide
Estolides can be custom tailored to specific needs in the market. Oligomer length, n, can be controlled to make products with viscosities ranging from ISO VG 22 to ISO VG 680 and higher. Figure 1. is a representation of how estolides can be functionalised with various moieties in the as α and β positions to yield compounds with additive-like properties, such as
Figure 2: Wear Protective Characteristics of Estolides Continued on page 35 LUBE MAGAZINE NO.173 FEBRUARY 2023 33
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56
