poll - high mileage civics, what oil U burn ?

"Rob B" wrote in news:xQLyf.41$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net:

It is extremely expensive to recover post-consumer motor oil, just like it's extremely expensive to recover *anything* post-consumer except aluminum. That would NOT be a "cheap way" to acquire a base stock. Unless you ignore the millions it will/would cost in tax monies that are/would be required to cajole refineries into taking the stuff.

It's the re-refinement that IS suspect, since some re-refining is done better than others.

well by cheap i mean a recycler probably does not have to pay for the used oil as in buying crude or derivatives at some cost per barrel and may even get some incentive or payed for recycling.

i do not know what if any cleansing would be required before the refining process to remove various contaminants ?

anyways it sounded like an interesting idea, "synthetic mfg from recycling used oil"

well ok i concur with that point, and i am wondering what is in the walmart labeled synthetic ?

snip

It surely is most interesting - to make synthetic from recycling used oil.

"T L via CarKB.com" wrote in news:5a74fcedb212d@uwe:

Wal-Mart does not say on their MSDS's. Safety Kleen does not list that product under any recognizable name. But here are their motor oil MSDS's:

However, I did find this URL:

An excerpt from above: "However, you can buy re-refined oil, like Tech-2000 ($1.56/litre at Wal-Mart) or Zellers' Autoprix ($2.27/litre)."

Apparently they are!

"Rob B" wrote in news:97Tyf.244$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net:

The cost is in the recovery itself. The trucks, the personnel, the sorting, the elimination and disposal of contaminants, etc.

Ever wonder what becomes of the tons of toxins removed every year from used motor oil? I have, too.

Lots and lots. And lots and lots. And lots. Lots more besides. Motor oil picks up tons of crud, which is one of its jobs. ALL of it has to be removed before the waste is turned back into motor oil again. Also, polymer chains tend to get shortened with use, which decreases film strength, so the oil needs to be "fixed" to make the chains the correct length again.

Lots of things sound like good ideas until you discover just how expensive and troublesome it really is to achieve the idea. It's stupid to spend double for something than you need to. Unless you're trying to make a point of some kind, like buying a "Smart" car.

Check out the MSDS's. See other post.

"karl" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

The fact that no one appears to be doing it should suggest something to you.

recovered aluminum, while it avoids the extensive energy expense of primary extraction, it not necessarily that useful a material. the recycling of old soda cans into new soda cans is a classic example [or at least, was when i was at metallurgy school - things may have changed]. the can comprises two alloys: the ductile portion that is deep drawn into the body of the can, and the lid which contains the ring pull. the lid needs to have limited ductility otherwise the material won't tear and the ring pull won't work. the body on the other hand requires ductility to be formed. once they're joined, there's no economic way of separating the two pieces, thus they both get melted together on recovery. the resulting alloy is now a mix of high & low ductility materials which is not usable for either part of the can. it can be refined, but only at high expense, thus recovered soda cans find their way into cast aluminum cylinder heads and other limited ductility applications. new cans are made of new material.

last i heard, the most recovered material is steel. recovery from domestic uses can be only 30%, but recovery from industrial use can be over 90%.

jim beam wrote in news:CL-dnd2ubp51o1HenZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@speakeasy.net:

Interesting.

The soft drink companies were the #1 proponents of recycling in its early days. They were originally afraid to be stuck with the recovery costs for cans the way they'd been for glass bottles. I guess they had no intention of using the recovered aluminum for themselves.

That was my point originally. Many industries (including my own) have been recycling their own waste for a century or more. Industrial waste is as clean and pure as it's going to get, so it's relatively inexpensive and easy to reuse.

The major problem with anything post-consumer is contamination. It's impossible to control at the point of collection, so you have to spend enormous sums at the sorting depot. And even then you'll get lots of rejection upon delivery unless you spend millions in taxpayers' money to bribe companies to take the shit.

My own industry is corrugated fiberboard. Post-consumer is hell to work with. It's a non-starter without subsidies. Plus, with all the recycling mandates, we've spent over a decade building entire new plants and machines to handle post-consumer, since little of the existing equipment could handle 99% recycled content. This caused shortages and increased prices for finished goods, and there were terrible quality problems for a long time. Also, the "recycled" corrugated contains a large percentage of resins to compensate for the short wood fibers.

Even now 99% recycled is a poor sister to virgin. For critical applications like UN-certified containers, virgin is the only way to go.

You can only recycle paper fibers so many times (about 7) before they get too short to use any more, so you always have to gauge the repulped mix and add virgin fiber and resins to beef it up again. They actually have giant blocks of virgin pulp (couple of feet on a side) that get dropped into the pulp like sugar cubes into coffee.

Did you know that for every 100 tons of recycled paper fibers you get 40 tons of unusable sludge? It gets landfilled or incinerated. No good for anything else.

as with most thread differences i investigated further and found some interesting info regarding re-refine (as it is called) of used motor oil one link is as follows

the basic points made: a.. 1 gallon of used oil produces 2½ quarts of re-refined lubricating oil. a.. Recycling used oil takes half as much energy as refining crude oil. a.. Re-refined oil prices are competitive with virgin oil products. a.. API approved re-refined oils meet warranty requirements for new automobiles. a.. The United States Postal Service and National Park Service use re-refined oil in their vehicles. a.. All the oil generated by do-it-yourself oil changers in America, if collected and re-refined, would provide enough motor oil for over 50 million cars annually.

and some other links

?osti_id=6867789 well you know how to search

The reason I assume Safety Kleen is the manufacturer of Tech 2000 is that their name shows up on the actually shelf price tag in Walmart. I was not able to find that name anywhere on the bottle.

Very interesting, thanks for the links Tegger.

I as well have been involved in wood recycling at my last employer, manufacturing particle board. Only within the last few years were we able to switch away from the old UF resins, to something more environmentally friendly. Well it didn't stink like UF anyways, still full of VOCs, though in lower quantities.

When I left, the VOC reduction strategy was in using more friendly finishing technologies.

But the bottom line is, like you say, virgin fibre is king, as it is much much more difficult to control the quality of the fibres used from recycled materials. Although we could boast a 97% yield of the trees we used, either for solid wood, veneer or particle board applications.

Another question, as its been forever since my last chemistry class. How would one lengthen the hydrocarbon chain of a shortened oil molecule? add carbon?

t

TeGGeR® wrote:

interesting. almost /all/ special steels are made from scrap. they require extensive refining anyway, so may as well use [cheaper] scrap as the start material. most new material gets put into continuous-cast product that can't tolerate some of the contaminants post-consumer steels contain.

tell my gf that next time she's insisting we sort through the garbage. :( i'm all for recycling where possible, and motor oil actually /is/ a candidate, but domestic stuff like oj containers, bags, cartons, etc??? i say forget it.

i have a re-useable coffe cup (i.e. hard ceramic like thing) that claims to be made from recycled paper ?

robb :)

There is a misconception, more clearly expressed in the message dated Jan 16, 7:18 pm: no matter how much is spent on cleaning "used" oil it is not possible to make synthetic out of it. This "interesting idea" is useless because it doesn't work.

snip

"T L via CarKB.com" wrote in news:5a78a8d97c785@uwe:

It won't normally say on the bottle, just on the MSDS, which I can't find for Canada.

We used very little resins before recycled hit big-time. Now they're necessary to tie stuff together without using too much virgin.

They've found a way. Just how I don't know, since I come in contact with the stuff after the mill.

Ten-fifteen years ago we had awful problems with dust and warpage. Most of those have been more-or-less fixed (at great expense).

Corrugated also gets nearly 100% usage out of the trees. We pulp them entirely, so stuff like splits and knots are meaningless.

The stupid thing is that nobody seems to know that just about all the trees used for paper are FARMED for that purpose. About 85% the last time I looked, anyway. Recycling paper to "save trees" makes as much sense as refusing to eat corn in order to "save" corn plants. Paper recycling is idiotic, but it's been sold to the public so effectively that you can't counter the nonsense.

No idea. I never took chemistry.

This brings up another point though, that being a reason you're supposed to change your manual tranny oil every so often: It seems gear action actually chops up long polymer chains, so tranny oil has less and less film strength the older it gets, and relies more and more on the sulfur and zinc additives. Read that in some car magazine.

"Rob B" wrote in news:01Zyf.479$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net:

Got a brand name or any other kind of ID on it?

I'd suspect they're using the paper fiber as a filler and using acrylic resin as the binder. Much like a "cultured marble" sink.

"karl" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:

Guess it would if you took each molecule apart into its constituent atoms, and then reassembled them into the molecules you wanted, no?

But even if you could, what would be the point?

Superglue?