lubricating oil production, UPR, ecoinvent 3.6, Undefined
Location: RER - Europe
This dataset represents the production of 1 kg of liquid lubricating oil, including additives.
The most important function of lubricants is the reduction of friction and wear. Apart from important applications in internal combustion engines, vehicle and industrial gearboxes, compressors, turbines, or hydraulic systems, there are a vast number of other applications which mostly require specifically tailored lubricants. In terms of quantity, mineral oil components continue to be the most important ingredients of lubricants. Petrochemical components and, increasingly, derivatives of natural, harvestable raw materials from the oleo-chemical industry are finding increasing acceptance because of their environmental compatibility and some technical advantages.
This dataset is based on literature and industrial data. The additives included in the lubricating oil are based on Raimondi et al. (2012). The energy consumption is approximated based on data from a large chemical factory (Gendorf 2016).
References:
Mang, T., Noll, S. and Bartels, T. 2011. Lubricants, 1. Fundamentals of Lubricants and Lubrication. Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry.
Andrea Raimondi, Giorgia Girotti, Gian Andrea Blengini and Debora Fino (2012) LCA of petroleum-based lubricants: state of art and inclusion of additives. Int J Life Cycle Assess (2012) 17:987–996.
Gendorf (2016) Umwelterklärung 2015, Werk Gendorf Industriepark, www.gendorf.de.
Undefined unit processes (UPRs) are the unlinked, multi-product activity datasets that form the basis for all of the system models available in the ecoinvent database. This is the way the datasets are obtained and entered into the database by the data providers. These activity datasets are useful for investigating the environmental impacts of a specific activity (gate-to-gate), without regard to its upstream or downstream impacts.
A huge variety of different compositions are known under the name “lubricants” – actually, 5’000 to 10’000 different formulations are used to satisfy about 90% of the different lubricants applications. In terms of quantity, mineral oil components continue to be the most important ingredients. But more and more, derivatives of natural, harvestable raw materials from the oleo-chemical sector are finding their acceptance within the used substances.
In 1999 around 37 Mt of lubricants have been consumed – thereof more than half in the automotive sector (56%), and another 29% as industrial lubricants. This amount is produced by around 1700 producers worldwide. Thereof, about 200 are vertically-integrated petroleum companies where lubricants are only a minor part of their profit. Nevertheless, less than 2% of all lubricant manufacturers are producing more than 60% of the total production volume. In case of the remaining 1500 companies, lubricants are their core business.
In terms of the volume, base oils are the most important parts of lubricants. The rest is composed of additives. For this dataset, the additives are based on data published in Raimondi et al. (2012).
ecoinvent EULA