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Oiled up: What’s new in recycling used lubricating oils
22/1/2025
8 min read
Feature
Use of re-refined base oils is becoming more commonplace, for practical, ethical and sustainable good practice. Toby Clark looks at the latest developments, such as engine oils for heavy duty vehicles.
Lubricating oil is essential for most machinery and the vast majority is derived from fossil oil. Mineral-based oil can withstand the temperatures and pressures that build up in rotating or sliding mechanisms, and can help to transfer heat away from critical spots.
There are honourable exceptions (vintage motor races are known for the smell of hot castor oil) but alternatives such as animal-derived oils are often unacceptable. Even so-called ‘synthetic’ oils are typically derived from crude mineral oil products.
But mineral lubricating oils do not have to be consumed and then disposed of. In fact, they can be recycled and reused as a high-quality product known as re-refined base oils (RRBO), again and again. These are blended, and suitable additive packs added to create a usable oil. As Finnish firm Tecoil puts it: ‘We can regenerate used lubricant oil back to base oil infinite times. This means significantly less CO2 emissions and no need for virgin crude oil.’
Re-refining oils – how is it done?
Used lubricating oils have been re-refined to a certain extent for years, particularly in developing countries such as India. Basic filtration for large contaminants has been followed by de-watering – getting rid of water that has condensed into the oil. Oil is kept in a holding tank to let water and impurities settle out; a further process uses sulphuric acid to separate oil from water and contaminants. However, this leaves a highly polluting slurry by-product, so the process has been widely banned.
The main process for re-refining waste oils is also used in traditional oil refining: vacuum distillation. Conventional distillation involves heating a liquid until it boils – and different components (fractions or cuts) boil at different temperatures. The vapour of each fraction can be separated out and then condensed into a pure liquid.
However, heating lubricating oil to boiling point – sometimes well over 500°C – can break down some critical ingredients. The key is to reduce the atmospheric pressure using a vacuum pump, which causes the liquid to boil at a lower temperature. Typically, vacuum distillation can be completed at just 270–300°C.
Further processes include solvent-based extraction. German re-refiner AVISTA Oils uses a technique called extended selective refining (ESR) which ends with the separation of the solvent from the product so that the completely recovered solvent can then be used again.
The final result is a lubricant base oil which can be used again, and again. As Barrie Thomas of the Oil Recycling Association puts it: ‘The base oil can be re-refined many times, it never wears out.’
This process of regeneration has led to products for the regular consumer. In 2024 French manufacturer TotalEnergies Lubrifiants (which has bought Tecoil) launched the Quartz EV3R range of lubricants for cars and vans – a high-quality 10W-40 engine oil made with 100% RRBO. Priced at the same level as a conventional high-end engine oil, Quartz EV3R is compatible with the latest engines from mainstream manufacturers such as Stellantis.
TotalEnergies Lubrifiants has just extended the range to heavy-duty vehicles (trucks, buses and coaches) with its Rubia EV3R engine oils, available in industry-standard 15W-40 and 10W-30 viscosity grades. These are not totally fossil-free. The company says that ‘RRBOs account for more than 50% of the base oils’ – but, crucially, the oils meet the requirements of OEMs (own equipment manufacturers) such as DAF and IVECO. It also claims its RRBOs meet testing and certification requirements (homologations) of leading OEMs, equivalent to its conventional lubricants range.
Jean-Paul Souchez is responsible for developing heavy-duty diesel engine oils at TotalEnergies Lubrifiants. ‘At the beginning, RRBOs were used in simple products like hydraulic oils,’ he says. ‘The quality of RRBOs at the very beginning was not so great.’ As the quality of RRBOs improves, there is the option of creating engine and transmission oils. But there needs to be a full validation process. ‘That is, we need to have a full certification by our products and we need to have full approvals by the OEMs. It means passing all the engine tests. So, it’s lots of investment, but at the end we have products which are technically, completely equivalent to the original products.’
There are two excellent justifications for recycling oil, relevant at each end of the product’s life. One is that the base oil of lubricants makes up only a small proportion of each barrel of crude – perhaps 1% by volume – so it is costly compared with fuel oils and gasoline (petrol). The other is that waste lubricating oil is a serious pollutant.
Legislation plays its part. TotalEnergies Lubrifiants must comply with EU waste laws and particularly the French extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations, which enforce the ‘polluter pays’ principle. ‘But this tax is there to finance waste oil recycling,’ says Souchez. ‘We can [minimise] this tax if we introduce RRBOs in our products, so it’s more like an incentive.’
Similarly, Barrie Thomas, Director General of the UK’s Oil Recycling Association, says: ‘While there are no direct financial incentives specifically for re-refining waste lubricating oil, the legislation establishes a regulatory environment that encourages recycling and proper disposal.’ He adds that as the government increasingly recognises the need for sustainability and promoting a circular economy, ‘re-refining of waste oils is essential… and waste oil recovery for fuel in this environment should be discouraged’.
These obligations explain why, for example, Shell bought a large stake in Texas-based Blue Tide Environmental in 2022.
Of course, CO2 emissions are also critical. Extracting lubricant-quality base oil from crude oils is energy-intensive, and Tecoil claims that regeneration of used oil creates at least 12x less CO2 emissions in total than virgin oil refining. Similarly, AVISTA Oils says that its products use 90% less CO2 equivalent than products from primary refining. Tecoil also claims regeneration is far more benign than simply incinerating used oils, producing at least 10x less CO2 – amounting to a saving of around 3.3tCO2 per tonne of oil produced.
Collecting waste oil
For a vehicle operator, an industrial operation or even a ship in port, waste oil collection is an efficient process. Firms such as Oil Recoveries have apps which allow you to schedule a collection from your phone.
The driver checks in just before arrival, so setup can begin immediately. Oil Recoveries says: ‘The driver can be on-site for 30 minutes to 1 hour, but they ensure zero disruption to the normal running of your business.’ They may also remove waste fuel and other contaminated liquids, as well as used filters, shop rags and the like. The final, critical step is completing paperwork properly, to comply with legislation and environmental audits.
Waste oil collection costs money, of course, although that may change. In Finland, Tecoil will collect batches of over 800 litres of used lubricating oil for free from anywhere in the country, as long as it’s suitable for regeneration.
Waste oil collectors such as Oil Recoveries have apps which allow a business to use a phone app to schedule a collection
Photo: Oil Recoveries
What concrete impact does RRBO have on an end-user’s carbon footprint? ‘It will essentially depend on the quantity of RRBO that can be introduced in a given product,’ says Souchez. For the Rubia EV3R range – which uses around 50% RRBO in its formulation – ‘we have calculated the carbon footprint impact and we can go up to 35% improvement compared to a classical engine oil’.
Chris Sharman is Workshop Manager for Heidelberg Materials’ depot in Rutland, and a member of the Engineering Forum of trade body Logistics UK. He looks after a fleet that works in the abrasive and corrosive conditions of aggregate transport, where preventative maintenance is key. Sharman says that he hasn’t come across regenerated oils. ‘It’s something that has gone under the radar, but I’d like to know more.’
Sharman is particularly excited about the possibility of a circular recycling process, trading old oil for new: ‘I’d definitely be interested in looking at how that works.’ Of course, his workshop already collects waste fluids. These are separated into used engine oil only, and a mixture of other substances (diesel fuel, brake and steering fluids, etc). Some engine oil is used to fuel workshop heaters, too.
He’s interested in the possibility of a trial period. Truck and bus operators are already used to regenerated products: most use tyres which can be remanufactured numerous times.
There is evidence that consumers would prefer more environmentally responsible lubricants. A YouGov survey in 2023 indicated that 40% of UK drivers would choose to go back to a garage or mechanic based on environmental factors ‘even if that meant paying a higher price for services’, and that a further 15% would prefer to use a mechanic that was committed to environmental impact, ‘costs being equal'.
As Sharman puts it, when looking to reduce your carbon footprint ‘you look at diesel fuel, but you don’t think about the 30 litres of oil in the engine’.
Base oils
Lubricating oils are a combination of a base oil – usually mineral or synthetic – and a set of additives designed to improve attributes such as viscosity index and wear resistance, or to reduce oxidation, corrosion and foaming. Base oil is usually classified using a system devised by the American Petroleum Institute: API Groups I, II and III are extracted from crude oil using progressively more sophisticated techniques, and generally have progressively better performance as a result. Group III base oils are made using a strong hydrotreatment process which creates new molecular structures, so they are sometimes known as semi-synthetic oils.
Group IV base oils are fully-synthetic oils which use petrochemical ingredients, but which are not directly derived from crude oil, while Group V includes all other base oils – whether synthetic, mineral or otherwise derived.
- Further reading: ‘Market outlook for pyrolysis oil, as a recycling process that reduces crude oil demand for plastics and fuels’. Pyrolysis oil growth is expected to fundamentally reshape the waste management, chemical, fuel and plastic landscape.
- The world’s leading oil and gas companies are ramping up investments in biofuels as they navigate the energy transition, with more than 40 projects planned by the end of the decade, according to Rystad Energy’s latest analysis.
