The STLE Compass, Episode Seven
“What Is Green?” with Dr. Neil Canter, Owner/Founder of Chemical Solutions
KARA: Hello, I’m Kara Lemar. Welcome to the STLE Compass, brought to you by the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers. The STLE Compass is your convenient and reliable resource for the latest developments in the tribology community.
This is another episode of The STLE Compass and today the focus is on going “green”. The term “green” is becoming more and more apparent in our daily lives as suppliers of consumer products are trying to convince us that their product is the most environmentally friendly. In the lubricant market, there has been a slow development of biodegradable lubricants and some suppliers have claimed their products to be green. The purpose of this podcast and our interviewee’s article is the attempt to show that the main functions of a lubricant play a major role in answering this question.
Dr. Neil Canter runs his own consulting company called Chemical Solutions, which works to provide product development, technical support, market analysis and regulatory assistance to the lubricant industry. He has just recently published an article in our monthly member magazine, Tribology & Lubrication Technology, or TLT. Dr. Canter writes various articles for TLT, including the monthly installment of Tech Beat. Dr. Canter has been an STLE member for over 25 years, and in that time, he has participated and chaired various committees. He is currently the Vice Chair for STLE’s new Annual Meeting education course on biofuels and biolubricants. We continue our discussion on this topic with him today, using his article, “What is Green?” as a focusing lens. If you haven’t read the article yet, you can find it in the December issue of TLT.
Neil, welcome to the STLE Compass.
NEIL: Thank you.
KARA: How are you?
NEIL: I’m fine, thank you.
KARA: Very good. So let’s just start right off the bat: what made you want to write the article? Why this topic?
NEIL: The topic of environmentally friendly or biodegradable or green type lubricants has become a, I think a very popular type topic these days. Not just in the lubricant industry, but in other industries and people are becoming more and more concerned in all parts of the world about the environment and how to do things that will make it less hazardous in the environment because of all sorts of concerns. And green and sustainable have also become issues regarding marketing and people are trying to market biodegradable lubricants, green lubricants, and all sorts of other green items to us, both from an industrial standpoint and to us as consumers, that I thought that an article not just on the subject of biodegradables or even on lubricant applications, but also what green means and what sustainable means is important because the lubricant industry, I think, needs to be aware that it has the opportunity and the tools to really take advantage of these concepts and utilize them because that’s what lubricants do, they provide beneficial aspects to reduce energy and improve productivity, which is going to improve the green or sustainable aspect of a process.
KARA: Certainly. So you talked about in the article the difficulty in defining those terms, “green” and “sustainable.” How would you define those?
NEIL: Yes. It is still difficult. It’s a good question, but I would define “green,” for a green lubricant, it’s a substance or mixture that is derived mainly from biodegradable resources that has a beneficial effect on our environment. And by beneficial, because again that’s a term that has it’s problem in terms of definition, I mean a substance or a lubricant that is not toxic and does not pollute the environment. Again, these are general answers because everyone has an opinion about what pollutes and what doesn’t. Moving on to “sustainable,” I think sustainable has more of an economic and social factor to it. A sustainable product has to incorporate all of the positive features of being green and also be economically competitive with a counterpart prepared from a petroleum sourced raw material. It also must have a beneficial impact to those individuals using it either in a consumer or industrial application and also be relatively harmless to the environment.
KARA: “Beneficial impact to the individuals using it” – beneficial how?
NEIL: Well beneficial from the standpoint, it’s safe, it’s not going to hurt them from a toxic or safety standpoint, it also can be disposed of, but beyond all that, it has to have a positive feature and positive benefit in what it’s doing in the application.
KARA: Certainly. So, most talk about the formulation and end result of using something like a biodegradable lubricant. You discuss the need for a focus on how “the basic functions of a lubricant impact the actual application.” Can you talk a little more about that? How are the emphases different?
NEIL: I think the emphasis is different because when you talk about a biodegradable lubricant, you’re worried about the beginning of its life and the end of its life, if you think about going from a cradle to grave type approach. The beginning of its life is what raw materials are being used to prepare the particular lubricant, are they renewable, do they come from growing them in some way – either from a vegetable standpoint or an animal standpoint? And then at the end of the lubricant life, the concern is will they biodegrade and go back into the environment safely and easily, and not be toxic matter? And those are important, don’t get me wrong. The aspect that I think is helpful here and the focus for the article is that the lubricant in between, where it’s doing its benefit, is something that the industry needs to pay more attention to, and the fact that there are positive benefits for lubricants and they encompass both the biodegradable and the non-biodegradable categories. By non-biodegradable, I mean petroleum-based. Because they help industrial processes reduce energy use and improve productivity, which ultimately will help them be more efficient, use less energy, waste less energy, and generate fewer impurities or byproducts that could potentially pollute the environment.
KARA: Great. So what is an example from the article of the types of lubricants, and those used in an application?
NEIL: Well, I think a
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prime example from the article, and we talk about it, is the introduction of a green lubricant used in the hot milling of steel, and the organization doing it, indicated that yes, the lubricant was derived from renewable sources, but also that it had major benefits going beyond that in terms of application. And think about it, if you think of a steel mill, that’s almost the antithesis of a green type use or green application. You think about a lot of smokestacks, a lot of pollution, a lot of energy being used or even wasted.

KARA: Sure.

NEIL: And these are issues where productivity certainly needs to improved and energy saved. As I mentioned in the article, the U.S. Steel industry is an example. They have done a good job of improving its productivity in order to survive in the very competitive global marketplace. And they did it, not because they wanted to improve the environment, they did it for economic reasons. In order to survive against foreign competition, they had to become smarter and more efficient.

KARA: Of course.

NEIL: One area though, that has not been examined until recently is the process of reducing the thickness of the steel, which is called a rolling or metal forming operation. From the individual I interviewed for the article, whose company developed this lubricant, this operation has been judged to account for between ten and fifteen percent of the energy used by the mill. This is maybe not a lot, but certainly, since the average mill uses a tremendous amount of energy, it’s still significant. So, they found that a new green hot mill lubricant made from renewable resources, provides better performance than existing technology. This not only may lead to an energy reduction in the U.S. of ten percent, but also can reduce the carbon footprint in steel mills. Carbon footprint, another item we talk about in the article, is an important factor because it is a measure of the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted by a specific process. And the objective is to get a positive contribution to the carbon footprints meaning that fewer greenhouse gases are emitted than taken out in a specific process. And we talk also about data that was generated by this company showing the actual benefits, the performance benefits of the lubricant. And that’s a key aspect: a lubricant that is not only biodegradable, not only green, but actually performs well and performs better than the petroleum-based counterparts.

KARA: Exactly. You mentioned performance: the current view of biodegradable or bio-based products is that they do not compete performance-wise with petroleum based products. How can that conception be changed?

NEIL: Well, that’s not necessarily true. They do compete, in fact, they can be better. I think the problem with the perception is a matter of economics and price. Most biodegradable lubricants that work well and provide superior performance are not priced competitive with petroleum-based products, and that has been the big struggle the biodegradable arm of the lubricant industry has had in trying to gain market share and trying to change industry conception and perception about them. Many of the products that provide superior performance are ester-based technologies and they certainly do well in a number of different applications. The stumbling block is their price. It really is a situation where the lubricant industry, which is always at times very slow to move and to change because operations are very critical and vital, at some point, I think the technology will be developed where biodegradable lubricants will be priced more competitive.

KARA: Well that’s a good point and I think that will develop as it goes along and as they develop better products. So what would you consider to be the other issues facing the effort to go green?

NEIL: Well, going back to the economic issue, which is the main issue because that’s certainly still the main criteria for selection of lubricants is their price, and that’s discussed as well in the article because certainly companies that make these products know that their customers are buying a lot on price, and the problem from their customers’ standpoint, is the purchasing group will just look at the initial cost of the lubricant and won’t necessarily interface with the maintenance or the operational group which realize that it’s durability, it’s treat rate, it’s overall benefit is much more important than just its initial cost and these efforts by the lubricant industry to argue these points have unfortunately fallen, at times, on deaf ears. The biggest issue here, stumbling block, is for those lubricants that are priced competitive with petroleum-based products, many of them do not work that well. Ones that come to mind, for example, are vegetable oils such as soybean oil. Soybean has some good features, but some of its biggest problems are its high level of oxidation and rancidity because it has a high degree of polyunsaturation due to a high level of an oleic content. And these have led to a negative image of biodegradable, or shall we say, green-based lubricants, that have made it difficult for the industry to overcome.

KARA: But that will certainly change as different products are developed…

NEIL: That will change. There are versions of soybean oil that have been developed now that have less polyunsaturation, they are more expensive, but I certainly see and am hopeful that the time will come where more biodegradable-type base stocks, if you will, because that’s what we’re talking about with vegetable oil, will be available that will have a better performance profile at a cheaper price.
KARA: Okay. So, are there are any other challenges that the industry itself needs to face?
NEIL: Well, I think one of the other biggest challenges is, and this goes back to the availability and price issue, the fact that, soybean oil is an example, is also a food as well. So there has been a struggle going on, if you will, about where the vegetable oil should be used. Should it be used in an edible-type application, as part of the food chain if you will, or should it be used in non-edible type applications? And some of this also has been highlighted because of the increasing growth and use of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel, biodiesel coming directly from soybean oil. So this has led to an increase in pricing which has really not helped the growth of the biodegradable lubricant area, or the green lubricant area. At this point, the industry and other industries that sell or use these types of biodegradable feedstocks, are looking at non-food sources such as cellulosic products or other types of plants that don’t get into the food chain. And I think there will be some time needed to develop these types of base stocks and get them priced competitive, but certainly this is a logical direction to go in which I think should provide benefit down the road.
KARA: Sure. So what conclusions would you want listeners to take away from today’s discussion and from the article?
NEIL: Well, I think the main aspect here is that we as an industry have emphasized more the cradle and the grave aspects of a biodegradable lubricant, in that it is made from a renewable resource, and also that it can biodegrade readily, but we have to also emphasize what’s happening in between, what’s going on during the actual application because products derived from both petroleum and renewable resources can act as green products by reducing energy use, improving productivity and reducing the carbon footprint. And what I’m trying to emphasize with the article, is that if this type of strategy is carried out, the lubricant industry has the opportunity to get ahead of the curve on this issue of green and sustainable and enhance the value-added aspects of these offerings and these products now and into the future.

KARA: Well, that sounds like a very promising future.
KARA: Thank you Dr. Canter for joining us today and for your insight.
NEIL: You are most welcome. I appreciate the opportunity.
KARA: I’m Kara Lemar. For more news, information and research on going green in the tribology field, you can visit our website at www.stle.org. Make sure you read the article to continue the conversation on “What is Green?” The 2011 Annual Meeting will feature a full day education course on green related topics, including biobased fuels and biobased lubricants, so make sure to check that out as well. Thank you for joining us today. This has been another episode of the STLE Compass, pointing you in the right direction.