Lube-Tech PUBLISHED BY LUBE: THE EUROPEAN LUBRICANTS INDUSTRY MAGAZINE
In recent years the introduction and compliance to the European Eco-label in particular has lead to significant growth in the demand for lubricants which are both biodegradable and high in C renewability content.
For environmentally acceptable lubricants, esters must also have low toxicity towards aquatic organisms and be non- bioaccumulating but these are essentailly a given for esters whereas biodegradability and renewability content are controllable and are used to design-in all the other properties of the ester base fluid, such as oxidation stability and low temperature performance.
Ester Base Fluid Properties and Applications As mentioned at the very beginning, the formulator has a broad range of base fluids from which to choose and it is essential that the correct base fluid is selected for a given application, whether that is a mineral oil derived hydrocarbon base fluid or a synthetic base fluid. It should be remembered that esters are not a simple group of compounds, there are literally hundreds of different types of esters in use around the world in a whole range of applications.
In this short article a small but very important selection of key physical properties have been described and there are many more which are also critical for different applications. Figure 5 attempts to draw some links between different physical properties and their importance in some key applications but even this schematic fails to do justice to the breadth of properties and applications in which esters find use.
John Eastwood
Croda Lubricants – Global Marketing Manager
john.eastwood@croda.com
LINK
www.crodalubricants.com
No.100 page 6
Esters certainly have the greatest flexibility of the different types of base fluids available today and they can be tuned to give specific physical and chemical properties. Given the wide range of acids and alcohols available and the possibility to combine them in unique ways there is almost certainly an ester that is already commercially available or that can be designed to help meet the challenges of the lubricants industry today and in the future.
Figure 5. Schematic of feature and applications for esters base fluids LUBE MAGAZINE NO.129 OCTOBER 2015 37
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