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FUELS & LUBES INTERNATIONAL Volume 20 Issue 2
undergraduate degree in physics at
Cambridge University, also in the
UK. Unlike a number of people in
the lubricant industry, who mostly
have backgrounds in chemistry
and mechanical engineering,
Taylor stands out for his physics
background. “Diversity on the team
is a significant asset,” he said.
“After several years of hard
work, Shell is at a critical point in
research and development and is
poised to introduce new lubricants,”
Taylor said.
“We’ve done a lot of basic
understanding on how to develop
better fuel economy products while
still retaining durability. We’ve iden-
tified molecules; we’ve identified
what the best viscosity modifiers
are; and we’re at the stage of passing
that understanding to our product
development team, so we’re hoping
some of the ideas and techniques
and additives we’ve found in the
first couple of years will find their
way into products,” he said.
The lubricant landscape has
changed dramatically in the last
two decades.
“It’s a lot more complicated to
lubricate machines nowadays than it
was 10 or 20 years ago because then
everything was steel against steel and
now we’ve got to worry about how
lubricants work with a much wider
range of materials. So there’s cer-
tainly a lot of work to do in research
to make sure we constantly provide
products that customers want.”
As a technology scout, he at-
tends conferences like the World
Tribology Congress in Turin, Italy,
in September 2013. He was particu-
larly interested in nanoparticles,
diamond-like carbon coatings and
ionic liquids. Whatever he learns,
he takes back to the research arena.
“I feed that into the discovery
hub so we’re reflecting what’s going
on in the wider community,” he said.
Taylor said nanoparticles, which
can be used as filler in lubricants to
decrease friction and wear, probably
don’t have immediate promise as a
lubricant additive, but not necessar-
ily because they are not effective.
“I think we are always evaluat-
ing new additives, and that will
include nanoparticles, but we will
treat them as any other additive, and
we will screen them for their poten-
tial use the same way as any other
potential additive. So if they’ve
got promise and they give benefits
compared to what we’re using now,
we will consider them.
“But we’ve got to look at the big
picture, not just at how good they
are, but also who’s making them?
Can they be supplied globally?
How easy it is to meet health and
safety requirements?”
Taylor said those challenges
mean it will probably be a while
before nanoparticles come into a
finished Shell product.
“But there certainly is a lot of re-
search in this area, and if something
promising comes along, we certainly
wouldn’t rule it out. But I think
there’s quite a few hurdles before
they would appear in products.”
Taylor said he found a lot of
quality discussions happening at
the World Tribology Congress.
“There’s certainly a lot of interest in
energy efficiency, a lot of interest
in new materials. So, diamond-like
carbon coating, ionic liquids... a lot
of options are being looked at. A lot
of talks about optimizing machine
elements—piston rings, timing
chains, bearings and the use of new
materials and new additives.”
“Ionic liquids are ‘hot’ right
now,” Taylor added. But, he said,
“the range of ionic liquids you can
get, how they’re made and whether
they can be made in high volumes
are the questions. At the moment,
the focus is on using ionic liquids
as additives rather than base oils.
If anyone wanted to use ionic liquids
as base oils, I think the price would
have to come down quite a bit.”
Shell does not discriminate.
Researchers will try anything they
believe has promise even for years
down the road.
For instance, Shell is collaborat-
ing with the U.S. Department of
Energy to explore applications for
ionic liquids.
Researchers are still trying
to overcome the classic dilemma:
The lower the viscosity, the more
the friction-modified lubricants
help to improve a vehicle’s fuel
economy. Yet, the lower the viscos-
ity, the more wear on the engine.
“Coupled with that, the other
way of getting better fuel economy is
downsizing the engine. If you down-
size the engine, you get same power,
[but you] get a hotter engine with
less lubricant, so there’s a lot more
stress on lubricants,” Taylor said.
“You’ve got higher pressures in the
combustion chamber, so although
the overall vehicle gets better fuel
economy, you potentially put a lot
more stress on engine components
like the lubricant.”
“Our approach at Shell is to get
involved in a number of these areas
just to see if there is anything in
these new materials that we want to
put in our products in the future.”
The testing process offers up
its own set of challenges. It’s much
quicker and cheaper to do tribol-
ogy testing in the lab, but it does
not always reproduce what’s going
on in a real machine. So sometimes
lab tests are helpful, but in some,
stage tests must take place in an
actual engine. The ultimate test is a
real engine or field test.
The most dramatic change
in the lubricant field in the last
20 years has been the move from
mineral oils to synthetics in engine
oils, he said.
In Europe and the U.S., for
passenger cars and heavy-duty
vehicles, a lot of customers and
OEMs are using synthetic oils
to meet fuel economy targets.
In other parts of the world, where
fuel economy standards are less
stringent, reliance on synthetic oils
has not been quite as dramatic.
Whether ambitious fuel
economy requirements can be met
is the real issue, he said.
The European Union legisla-
tion adopted in 2009 set mandatory
emission reduction targets for new
cars at 130 grams of CO2 per kilo-
meter (g/km) by 2015 and 95g/km
by 2020. These 2015 and 2020 tar-
gets represent reductions of 18% and
40%, respectively, compared with the
2007 fleet average of 158.7g/km.
The 2020 requirements are
a “massive step change in fuel
economy,” he said. Although OEMs
are making every effort to achieve
the goal, “some would question how
realistic it is,” he added.
“I think different OEMs have got
different potential ways of meeting
this target. You might get a diversity
of technologies, and those technolo-
gies may have different appetites
for lubricants. So we’re constantly
talking with OEMs quite closely and
working with them to meet different
fuel economy targets.”