Here is summary of article on Biolubes in U.S. : --The market for vegetable based lubricants continues to grow as an alternative to petrochemical based products
--Factors in favor: Government support, emerging technology, ongoing uncertainty over crude oil supply, response to environmental concerns. --Factors: oil leaking to ground, into fresh water, --Ester based hydraulic oils, gear oils and greases are recommended for use in environmentally sensitive areas. --Forestry applications, water management, utility transformers, food processing applications, human joint lubricants replacements, are all areas in need of biolubes and the precursors to wider applications --Based on synthetic or natural esters --Cost issue a barrier to widespread use for the average consumer. Biolubes still at a premium price and mainly fill niche markets and customers What should we expect in the future? --Initial push was to solve and reduce impact of potential lubricant spills. --IE: The recently soy-based transformer fluids. --Challenge: ironically, the US-EPA considers all spills, either vegetable based oils/lubes or traditional oil, as requiring identical levels of reporting and cleanup even though biolubes are cleaner. --Unless this status changes within US-EPA then benefits of using vegetable based biolubes and "bio whatever" will not be realized. --Other drivers: Green Chemistry initiatives by the US Government. --the 2002 Farm Bill promoting homegrown versus petrochemical --Markets: ester based polymers, adhesives, personal care products, coatings, and of course biofuels, biolubes. --Challenges - pour point needs to be addressed due to hydrogenation. Other: even biobased lubes may have additives and not all additives are environmentally non-toxic. Need oxidative stability. Ability to work in low temperatures. Define what really is a biolube. What percentages, etc. References: Lubes N Grease Journal, Nov. 2004,Dr. Ray Bergstra Have a safe day, Phillip Wolfe __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
