What qualifies or characterizes a lubricant as green?

Paul Bosler, Fuchs Lubricants

Minimal Impact. Simple answers and simple categories don’t necessarily spell out the entire spirit and purpose of green initiatives.In a nutshell, a green lubricant is one that is manufactured, used, and disposed in an environmentally responsible manner. The product and processes must have minimal impact on the environment.

Renewable Composition, No Poisons, Biodegradable. Typically such products are composed of renewable resources and contain no hazardous or poisonous ingredients. The lubricant should be biodegradable.

No Petroleum. The industry seems to have stretched the meaning of such terms as synthetic, water-soluble, no-hazardous, and biodegradable to the point where clarification would be welcome to better define “green” lubricants. For example, a synthetic lubricant should never contain petroleum or petroleum-derived ingredients such as chlorinated olefin or paraffin, yet under this label, some do. There are also vegetable oil-based lubricants that label themselves as synthetics, when in fact, a synthetic is a man-made ingredient. It doesn’t mean that these alternative oils are not green, but they would be better described as renewable than as synthetic.

Cradle-to-Grave. There are aspects of a green initiative for which a buyers’ guide may not be able to properly direct consumers. Green programs mandate cradle-to-grave processes. Lubricants producers must adhere to this concept and continually improve their own manufacturing processes toward green-friendly processes. This means they have undergone procedures to reduce the consumption of resources such as water and energy sources. It means that they practice sound environmental disposal practices to reduce the amount of effluent—and the impact of their effluent on the environment. It also means they provide stewardship to their communities and education to help consumers make decisions cognizant of the environmental impact of their product selection, use, handling, and disposal.

Beyond. Green programs tend to focus on the tangible characteristics of products such as those that are easily listed in a buyers’ guide. With a little creativity, they might be able to capture potentially more meaningful, but less tangible, characteristics: Can a lubricant be recycled without becoming rancid? If it can, this reduces use and disposal. Can a lubricant be welded through without washing? If so, this eliminates postprocess procedures that require water, energy, and waste disposal. Can a lubricant be washed at a lower temperature, thereby reducing wash bath temperatures and saving energy? Will it have less adverse effects on wash baths, thereby extending bath life and reducing disposal?

Performance. Finally, if a lubricant with green-friendly ingredients performs worse than a petroleum lubricant, does the scrap that has been created interfere with the goals of reducing the adverse impact on the environment? Tremendous energy goes into making steel and into generating scrap. These are the complexities of any green program that need to be assessed and should be part of the education process going forward.

Paul Bosler is business development manager, Fuchs Lubricants Co., 17050 Lathrop Ave., Harvey, IL, 60426, 708-333-8900, pbosler@fuchs.com, www.fuchs.com.

Jeff Jeffery, IRMCO

Veggie-based—How Harvested? We see this as a multifaceted question. The biobased, renewable, or vegetable-based lubes have merit from a supply and sustainability standpoint, but that does not adequately answer the question of what happens during or after they are used. While they are not derived from petroleum oils and all the nasty environmental issues they imply, they are not without their own environmental issues, such as how they are harvested (toxic fertilizers, field erosion, use of diesel fuel to harvest and transport them, energy to process them).

Also, when vegetable-based lubes are used, the end product still is oil-like and so has a host of use and disposal challenges just as petroleum oils do: They cannot be sewered; they are not easily recycled because of biodegradation; they are not compatible with welding, painting, and other secondary operations.

So are they really green? Depends on how you define “green.”

Total Impact. IRMCO defines green in terms of total process toxicity/impact on the environment—looking at the total process through “green glasses.”

Toxicity Level. Manufacturers should note the level of toxicity of the lubricants’ ingredients and hold them to benchmark levels.

Using green, nonoil lubricant technology, manufacturers can see good weld fume data, weld without prewashing, reduce or eliminate the energy consumed to remove oil from part surfaces, reduce or eliminate cleaning chemicals, and recycle more easily and lower toxicity ratings.

Nonoil products are not created equal in terms of tooling performance and toxicity.

Lean and Green. This green vision is also very compatible with lean manufacturing principles: Take waste out of the process. By focusing on tight lubricant application control, controlling waste, reducing energy costs, and eliminating oil-relatedprocessing steps, manufacturers can have a much bigger positive green impact.

Regarding performance, while being green is good, doing it with a drop in performance won’t fly. So green lubricants must be as good or better than nongreen lubricants.

Jeff Jeffery is president and CEO, IRMCO, 2117 Greenleaf St., Evanston, IL, 60202, 800-323-2933, jjeffery@irmco.com, www.irmco.com.

Steve Lowery, Tower Oil & Technology Co.

Synthetic or Renewable. The widely accepted definition of synthetic oil is “any oil that is free of petroleum.” However, while vegetable oils technically are synthetic oils because they do not contain petroleum, the terms renewable-resource or green best describe this source and type of oil.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been using the term biobased to describe the composition—in whole or in significant percentage—of a vegetable oil-based green lubricant, and it determines the minimum content a product must contain to be classified as biobased when it consists of plant, animal, or marine products.

Minimum Content. For a metalworking lubricant—whether it be soluble, semisynthetic, or synthetic—to be USDA-classified as biobased, it must contain, at minimum, 40 percent to 57 percent of renewable resources. (The lower percentage is considered general-purpose; the higher percentage is classified as high-performance.) Straight oil products must have a minimum oil content of 66 percent.

Biobased Doesn’t Mean Biodegradable. Another misunderstanding that needs clarification concerns the biodegradability of these biobased products. All too often biodegradable becomes synonymous with biobased, renewable resource, and green. Just because a product is biobased, made from a varying percentage of renewable resources, does not necessarily make it readily or ultimately biodegradable. Other additives and ingredients, such as petroleum products, esters, amines, glycols, and extreme-pressure additives, that are not biodegradable may be mixed with the biobased ingredients.

The lubricant industry has used terms like green and biobased to promote the environmental benefits of lubricants, but these terms do not guarantee their acceptability, safety, biodegradability, or biobased content. It is important to have a full understanding of the lubricant you are considering.

Steve Lowery is Vice President, director of sales for Tower Oil & Technology Co., 4300 S. Tripp Ave., Chicago, IL 60632, 773-927-6161, www.toweroil.com.