Dexter Palabay 2em2 What is Lubricant Oil

A lubricant is a substance introduced to reduce friction between moving surfaces. It may also have the function of transporting foreign particles. The property of reducing friction is known as lubricity. A good lubricant possesses the following characteristics:
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High boiling point. Low freezing point. High viscosity index. Thermal stability. Corrosion prevention. High resistance to oxidation.

One of the single largest applications for lubricants, in the form of motor oil, is protecting the internal combustion engines in motor vehicles and powered equipment. Typically lubricants contain 90% base oil (most often petroleum fractions, called mineral oil) and less than 10%additives. Vegatable oil or synthetic liquids such as hydrogenated polyolefins, esters, silicones, fluorocarbons and many others are sometimes used as base oils. Additives deliver reduced friction and wear, increased viscosity, improved viscosity index, resistance to corrosion and oxidation, aging or contamination, etc.

History of Lubricants

A lubricant is a substance interposed between two surfaces in relative motion for the purpose of reducing the friction and wear between them. Lubricant provides a protective film which allows for two touching surfaces to be separated and "smoothed," thus lessening the friction between them and correspondingly less heat generation in the machine, thereby keeping the working temperature of machine parts within safe operating limits. Wear and tear of parts is thus greatly reduced resulting in fewer breakdowns, greater machine utility, lower maintenance cost and longer machine life.

The recorded use of lubricants dates back to almost to the birth of civilization, with early historical developments being concerned with the use of fats/oils of animal or vegetable origin in transportation or machinery. Ancient inscriptions dating back to 1400 B.C. show early examples of systematic lubrication with animal fats (tallow) being applied to reduce friction on

chariot wheel axels. From these very early roots, efforts to reduce friction were dependent on relatively abundant animal and vegetable-based oils. During the middle ages (AD 450- 1450) there was a steady development in the use of lubricants, but it was not until AD 1600 - 1850 (particularly the industrial revolution in AD 1750 - 1850) that the value of lubricants in decreasing friction and wear was recognized. Colonel William Drake struck oil on Aug.27,1859; marking the birth of the petroleum industry. He drilled first oil well at Titusville, Pa in America in 1859 and his well-publicized oil well created a new way to supply an arguably superior oil product, which accelerated the move toward the use of mineral oil and hastened the birth of the petroleum age. Petroleum-based oils were not widely accepted at first because they did not perform as well as many of the animal-based products. Raw crude did not make a good lubricant. But as the demand for automobiles grew, so did the demand for better lubricants. Lubricant manufacturers soon learned which crude made the best lubricants. In the 1920s, lubrication manufacturers started processing their base oils to improve their performance. By 1923, the Society of Automotive Engineers classified engine oils by viscosity: light, medium and heavy. Engine oils contained no additives and had to be replaced every 800 to 1,000 miles. By approximately 1930, solvent processing emerged as a viable technology for improving base oil performance using a fairly safe, recyclable solvent. Additives began to be widely used in 1947 when the API began to categorize engine oils by severity of service: regular, premium and heavy-duty. Additives were used to extend the life only in premium and heavy-duty oils. In 1950, multigrade oils were first introduced which improved the hot and cold performance of the oil. For several decades, the lubricants industry continued to rely heavily on additive technology to improve the performance of finished oils. Lubricant quality improved significantly only when the additive chemistry improved. Modern lubricants are formulated from a range of premium base fluids and advanced additive chemistry. The base fluids has several functions but primarily it is the lubricant providing a fluid layer separating moving surfaces or removing heat and wear particles while keeping friction at minimum. Many of the properties of the lubricant are enhanced or created by addition of special chemical additives to base fluids. How Lubricants are made Since the Roman era, many liquids, including water, have been used as lubricants to minimize the friction, heat, and wear between mechanical parts in contact with each other. Today, lubricating oil, or lube oil, is the most commonly used lubricant because of its wide range of possible applications. The two basic categories of lube oil are mineral and synthetic. Mineral oils are refined from naturally occurring petroleum, or crude oil. Synthetic oils are manufactured polyalphaolefins, which are hydrocarbon-based polyglycols or ester oils.

Although there are many types of lube oils to choose from, mineral oils are the most commonly used because the supply of crude oil has rendered them inexpensive; moreover, a large body of data on their properties and use already exists. Another advantage of mineral-based lube oils is that they can be produced in a wide range of viscosities viscosity refers to the substance's resistance to flow for diverse applications. They range from low-viscosity oils, which consist of hydrogen-carbon chains with molecular weights of around 200 atomic mass units (amu), to highly viscous lubricants with molecular weights as high as 1000 amu. Mineral-based oils with different viscosities can even be blended together to improve their performance in a given application. The common 1OW-30 motor oil, for example, is a blend of low viscous oil (for easy starting at low temperatures) and highly viscous oil (for better motor protection at normal running temperatures). First used in the aerospace industry, synthetic lubricants are usually formulated for a specific application to which mineral oils are ill-suited. For example, synthetics are used where extremely high operating temperatures are encountered or where the lube oil must be fire resistant. This article will focus on mineral-based lube oil.

Raw Materials
Lube oils are just one of many fractions, or components, that can be derived from raw petroleum, which emerges from an oil well as a yellow-to-black, flammable, liquid mixture of thousands of hydrocarbons (organic compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen atoms, these occur in all fossil fuels). Petroleum deposits were formed by the decomposition of tiny plants and animals that lived about 400 million years ago. Due to climatic and geographical changes occurring at that time in the Earth's history, the breakdown of these organisms varied from region to region. Because of the different rates at which organic material decomposed in various places, the nature and percentage of the resulting hydrocarbons vary widely. Consequently, so do the physical and chemical characteristics of the crude oils extracted from different sites. For example, while California crude has a specific gravity of 0.92 grams/milliliter, the lighter Pennsylvania crude has a specific gravity of 0.81 grams/milliliter. (Specific gravity, which refers to the ratio of a substance's weight to that of an equal volume of water, is an important aspect of crude oil.) Overall, the specific gravity of crudes ranges between 0.80 and 0.97 grams/milliliter. Depending on the application, chemicals called additives may be mixed with the

Lubricating oil is refined from crude oil. After undergoing a purifying process colled sedimentation, the crude oil is heated in huge fractionating towers. The various vapors which can be used to make fuel, waxes, or propane, among other substances boil off and are collected at different points in the tower. The lube oil that is collected is filtered, and then additives are mixed in. refined oil to give it desired physical properties. Common additives include metals such as lead or metal sulphide, which enhance lube oil's ability to prevent galling and scoring when metal surfaces come in contact under extremely high pressures. High-molecular weight polymerics are another common additive: they improve viscosity, counteracting the tendency of oils to thin at high temperatures. Nitrosomines are employed as antioxidants and corrosion inhibitors because they neutralize acids and form protective films on metal surfaces.

The Manufacturing Process

Lube oil is extracted from crude oil, which undergoes a preliminary purification process (sedimentation) before it is pumped into fractionating towers. A typical high-efficiency fractionating tower, 25 to 35 feet (7.6 to 10.6 meters) in diameter and up to 400 feet (122 meters) tall, is constructed of high grade steels to resist the corrosive compounds present in crude oils; inside, it is fitted with an ascending series of condensate collecting trays. Within a tower, the thousands of hydrocarbons in crude oil are separated from each other by a process

called fractional distillation. As the vapors rise up through the tower, the various fractions cool, condense, and return to liquid form at different rates determined by their respective boiling points (the lower the boiling point of the fraction, the higher it rises before condensing). Natural gas reaches its boiling point first, followed by gasoline, kerosene, fuel oil, lubricants, and tars.

Sedimentation
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1 The crude oil is transported from the oil well to the refinery by pipeline or tanker ship. At the refinery, the oil undergoes sedimentation to remove any water and solid contaminants, such as sand and rock, that maybe suspended in it. During this process, the crude is pumped into large holding tanks, where the water and oil are allowed to separate and the contaminants settle out of the oil.

Fractionating
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2 Next, the crude oil is heated to about 700 degrees Fahrenheit (371 degrees Celsius). At this temperature it breaks down into a mixture of hot vapor and liquid that is then pumped into the bottom of the first of two fractionating towers. Here, the hot hydrocarbon vapors float upward. As they cool, they condense and are collected in different trays installed at different levels in the tower. In this tower, normal atmospheric pressure is maintained continuously, and about 80 percent of the crude oil vaporizes. 3 The remaining 20 percent of the oil is then reheated and pumped into a second tower, wherein vacuum pressure lowers the residual oil's boiling point so that it can be made to vaporize at a lower temperature. The heavier compounds with higher boiling points, such as tar and the inorganic compounds, remain behind for further processing.

Filtering and solvent extraction

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4 After further processing to remove unwanted compounds, the lube oil that has been collected in the two fractionating towers is passed through several ultrafine filters, which remove remaining impurities. Aromatics, one such contaminant, contain sixcarbon rings that would affect the lube oil's viscosity if they weren't removed in a process called solvent extraction. Solvent extraction is possible because aromatics are more soluble in the solvent than the lube oil fraction is. When the lube oil is treated with the solvent, the aromatics dissolve; later, after the solvent has been removed, the aromatics can be recovered from it.