Re-Refining of Waste Lubricating Oil by Solvent Extraction

Re-refining of waste lubricating oil by solvent extraction is one of the potential techniques. The advantages of solvent extraction technique practically offers from environmental and economic points of view have received due attention. In this paper selection of composite solvent and technique to upgrade the used lubricant oil into base oil has been made. The composite solvent 2-propanol, 1-butanol and butanone have two alcohols that make a binary system reasonably effective. This work also attempts to study the performance of the composite solvent in the extraction process for recovering waste lubricating oil. The key parameters considered were vacuum pressure, temperature and the weight ratio of solvent to waste lubricating oil. The performance was investigated on the PSR (Percentage Sludge Removal) and POL (Percent Oil Loss). The best results were obtained using composite solvent 25% 2-propanol, 37% 1-butanol and 38% butanone by a solvent to oil ratio of 6:1 at vacuum pressure 600mmHg and distillation temperature 250 degrees C. The vacuum distilled oil pretreated with the composite solvents was matched to the standard base oil 500N and 150N, found in close agreement and could be used for similar purpose.