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البحـث الثاني
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2016
أوابك العلمية لعام
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ص لبحوث العلمية الفائزة بجائزة
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عدد خا
مجلة النفط والتعاون العربي
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العدد
- 2017
أربعون
المجلد الثالث و ال
Re-refining of Used Lubricating Oil and its Economic and Environmental Implications
60
petroleum products. Even though the economic contribution of the re-refining industry
to the overall petroleum industry is often low, largely due to the small quantities being
recycled, a substantial energy savings can be realized by choosing this recycling option.
It has been previously pointed out in section 7 that re-refining consumes less energy
(50% to 85% less) than the refining of virgin oil into lubricants. The energy savings can
be translated into reductions in crude oil consumption. As previously indicated in
section 1, used lubricating oil contains about 70% base oil which can be recovered
through re-refining. According to GEIR, re-refining one barrel of used lube oil saves
about 70 barrels of crude oil. Estimates indicate that recycling used oils can save
millions of barrels of crude oil annually. By recycling used lubricating oil, a crude oil
importing country would save an enormous amount of money in its energy bill. As an
illustration of the savings that can be made by re-refining used lubricating oil, we take
the specific case of Egypt, the largest oil consumer in Africa, where 240000 tons are
available for collection (cf. Table 1). If we assume only 50% recovery of this amount of
used lube oil as base oil, 84000 metric tons (based on 70% recovery) of base lubricant oil
would be recovered every year. Based on the selling price of $1200 per ton, $100 million
could be generated annually as revenue. Furthermore, re-refining 120000 tons (50% of
collectable amount) of used lubricating oil could preserve 4.7 million tons of crude oil.
8
Used lubricating oil re-refining projects: A case study
The following is a case study of a re-refining project implemented in France in early
2010s. The OSILUB plant is part of a dynamic policy recycling encouraged by the
European directive on waste 2008/98 / EC, which states that countries must give priority
to the regeneration of waste oils at the expense of incineration, which is discouraged.
8.1
Project presentation
The 120000 ton per year re-refining project is located in Gonfreville, France. The owner
is OSILUB. The French regional government granted financial contribution to the
project. In France, regeneration became the norm in 2011 compared to incineration
(52%), reaching 63% in 2012. This figure is partly explained by the start of the new
OSILUB factory, which now has a capacity of 120 000 MTPY. The plant was designed by
STP and completed in 21 months. Raw material is collected from France and from North
Western Europe (England, Benelux).
The STP technology has been described earlier in section 4.6. The simplified process
flow diagram is illustrated in Figure 13.