Overview

摘要

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in Environmentally Acceptable (EA) or Environmentally Considerate (EC) Lubricants, especially among vessel, agricultural, construction, forestry, lumber, and mining industries where involuntary or accidental fluid leakage or spillage is detrimental to the environment. Another good reason to use EA lubricants is to find an alternative source of lubricants from the agricultural feed stocks and to reduce the consumption of petroleum crude oil. Currently, the biobased lubricants are considered as EA lubricants due to their environmental properties such as a high biodegradability, low toxicity, and no bioaccumulation. The biobased lubricant is currently formulated with oils extracted from renewable resources such as plants, crops, trees, or animals. These types of fluids are considered less toxic and more biodegradable than conventional petroleum based oils. The U. S. Department of Agricultures (USDA) biobased product guideline also defines exactly what products and how much concentration of renewable product associated with final product would be considered as a biobased product. Recently, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has also defined the EA lubricants based on the environmental properties and issued the Vessel General Permit (VGP) guide which requires the use of EA lubricants for all commercial vessels longer than 79 feet operated within three nautical miles of U. S. coastlines and in the Great Lakes. In response to the demand of EA lubricants, many oil companies have formulated EA lubricants for limited applications. To explore further this developing technology, research has already been or is being conducted in the broad science field using biobased oils.