446 Lubricant Additives: Chemistry and Applications
test. Petroleum hydraulic uids are either not biodegradable (<30% in 28 days) or inherently
biodegradable (30% < X < 59% in 28 days, where X is biodegradability).
Most of these biobased products are free of toxic performance chemicals such as sulfated ash,
zinc, calcium, and other heavy metals. Biobased products are also usually formulated to be virtually
nontoxic and frequently measure 5–10 times less toxic compared with the ASTM nontoxicity speci-
cation. A conventional petroleum lubricant typically contains a zinc and calcium additive perfor-
mance system and will generally be considered toxic. These uids are toxic and persistent as the
additive system kills the microbes responsible for biodegradation, and the petroleum uid itself is not
readily consumed by the microbes. There are, however, some inherently biodegradable petroleum
hydraulic uids containing ash-free additive systems and as such are less toxic than standard petro-
leum hydraulic uids. However, these products are still petroleum-based, and the microbes cannot
readily degrade (digest) these types of uids. They will persist in the environment for many months
or years and will dramatically reduce water quality, harming local wildlife and ecosystems.
Furthermore, standard petroleum products contain aromatic, cyclic (ring structure) hydrocarbons.
These aromatics cause the familiar rainbow sheen on a water surface. Biobased products do not con-
tain aromatics and as such do not produce a rainbow sheen on a water surface when spilled. Severely
hydrotreating petroleum oil during the re ning process will remove most aromatics. These uids might
not produce a sheen but will persist on the water surface harming the aquatic wildlife and ecosystem.
There are no universal de nitions of biobased, environmental, or biodegradable for lubricants.
The focus of this chapter is on vegetable or biobased lubricants with the vegetable oil content maxi-
mized at >60%. The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act (FSRIA or Farm Bill) was signed
into law in 2002. A goal of that legislation is to increase the government’s purchases and use of
biobased products. Under this legislation, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
has selected and prioritized items for designation as preferred biobased products and set minimum
biobased content levels. Each level of prioritization is issued in a round of designated products. In
the rst round, lubricant-related products were speci ed (Table 18.1) [1].
Despite the levels required by federal minimum biobased content, high-performance vegetable-
based products can sometimes contain >90% biobased content. As a result, they will be readily
(rapidly) biodegradable [2].
Also, this chapter looks primarily at environmentally compatible performance chemistry,
which is de ned as no heavy metals, no ash, low treatment volume, low toxicity, and low environ-
mental persistence. Use of these types of chemistries will not adversely affect the environmental
performance of biobased products and are very less toxic. One standard of measuring toxicity of a
substance is the LC 50, that is, the concentration, in parts per million (ppm), of a substance that is
lethal to 50% of the laboratory animals exposed to it in a 96 h test [3]. Therefore, the higher the LC
50, the lesser the toxicity. As most commercially available biobased lubricants can be formulated
at LC 50s ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 ppm, only formulations less toxic than 5,000 ppm will be
considered. This chapter, however, touches lightly on chemistry that seems to have a positive effect
TABLE 18.1
Government-Specifi ed Minimum Biobased Content
Product Minimum Biobased Content (%)
Diesel fuel additives 90
Hydraulic uids (mobile equipment) 44
Penetrating lubricants 68
Source: Extracted from United States Department of Agriculture Biopreferred
Web site, http://www.biopreferred.gov.
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