One of RecondOil’s primary goals is paving the way to a greener future. While oil is unlikely to go anywhere in the foreseeable future, it’s also environmentally devastating to extract.
One of the biggest causes of damage comes from carbon dioxide. If you’ve paid attention to the news cycle at all lately you know that it’s also one of the primary greenhouse gasses found in Earth’s atmosphere.
Re-using oil isn’t just convenient: it’s a great way to help combat the emissions problem in the oil chain of supply. But how much can it help in the end?
Understanding CO2 emissions and oil extraction
There are a lot of different ways to try and calculate the total emissions of a given amount of extracted oil but the truth is that there’s a lot more burning petrochemicals involved than most people consider.
In addition to the extraction process, the crude oil has to be shipped, refined, shipped again, modified for it’s end use, and finally shipped to distributors. Every step along the way results in increased CO2 emissions, whether it’s from machinery involved in the extraction process or just the engines burning gasoline while the product is shipped from place to place.
Calculating the exact value of CO2 involved per barrel of oil becomes a strange task quickly. Oil which moves farther, for instance, will have a higher end-footprint than oil which moves in over a smaller local area.
It’s no small matter either, currently it’s estimated that crude oil makes up about 15% to 40% of global CO2 emissions when extraction and transport are taken into account.
In addition to the CO2 emissions, oil fields are also leading producers of methane and other greenhouse gasses. Altogether it’s an enormous environmental issue and the cycle continually feeds into itself as more gas is burned to get the crude to where it’s going to… make more gas.
As a continually devolving cycle, oil recycling has become a big thing in recent years. The problem is that most recycling plants only clean the oil enough that it’s suitable for use as a fuel oil, no matter what the original origin was.
So what’s the problem?
As time has gone on and climate change looms ahead it’s become apparent that humans need to drastically reduce their carbon dioxide output to avoid catastrophe. Already the gears are set in motion for a greener future, with things like the Paris Agreement laying out guidelines for the future.
And, the truth is, we’re looking at catastrophe if we don’t change our ways.
Green technology often seems to be more expensive by a large margin, discouraging people from investing into it directly. This isn’t always the case, however, and as time wears on and oil continues to rise in price due to depleting supply other solutions will have to be found.
The thing is this: replacing lube oil entirely will have long term implications, including changing our entire industrial process as we know them around the world.
Producing a single liter of lubricant oil and using it once creates roughly 3.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide per liter. That adds up quickly, the US alone consumes 2.5 billion gallons of lubricant per year.
Even a small reduction in the amount of carbon released per liter would add up quickly.
Now what if we told you there was a way to decrease the amount of CO2 required to produce a liter of oil by 90%?
A new way to reduce emissions
Much of the CO2 emissions that come from the supply chain of crude oil come from the extraction process, as well as the vast distances it’s often shipped before being refined for its final use.
Combating the greenhouse gas emissions from the oil processing chain doesn’t have to mean attempting to replace petrochemicals in the normal supply chain however.
Instead, what if there was a way to reuse oil for its original purpose?
Before, oil simply worked its way down the chain from a refined product, to a recycled product, to eventually ending up as fuel oil or in our roads as the binding agent in asphalt.
Our Double Separation Technology (DST) has made it possible to return oil to its virgin grade through a recycling process. That means the same oil that was discarded from industrial machinery can be cleaned, chemically processed, and have the additives replaced to the precise levels required for lubrication in any given machine.
It can even be done locally, cutting down on the emissions and cost of logistics.
In the end, our process reduces the total carbon dioxide emissions from roughly 3.7 kilograms per liter of oil to less than 0.5 kilograms per liter of oil.
Sounds attractive, doesn’t it?
It’s a reality, and some of the oil in our supply chain has gone through the regeneration process over two dozen times already, with no depreciation in quality and virtually no input of additional oil.
The use of the DST regeneration process is already happening and the drastic reduction in carbon dioxide output is an enormous benefit to the environment. It even reduces on logistic emissions, since the oil can be treated locally.
Not recycled, regenerated
While traditional recycling reduces the amount of demand for crude oil by a bit, it simply isn’t effective when it comes to returning that same oil to the supply.
That’s where our DST comes in.
By creating a circular economy of oil and reducing carbon dioxide output the overall footprint of lubricating oils can be reduced. There’s simply no call for continuing to drag oil out of the ground at the same rate we have been when complete regeneration is possible.
It’s more than just a phase. It’s the future of lubricating oil.