metric tonnes per year (mtpy),
esters at 300,000 mtpy and PAG at
140,000 mtpy.
Although, in general, volumes
are flat, the market for esters is
growing faster than the average
gross domestic product (GDP) in
North America and Europe while the
market is growing robustly in Asia,
as well.
As Group II, III, GTL and PAO
base oils are gaining market share at
the expense of Group I, a niche has
also opened for esters as co-solvent
or co-base to increase additive solu-
bility, Kashani said. Ester properties
complement that of the other base
oils and also provide the desired
seal swell to counteract PAO seal
shrinkage.
“Esters are commonly used
to improve processing efficien-
cies, known to provide outstanding
technical performance and enhance
environmental safety in lubricant
applications, including oilfield
chemicals, hydraulic fluids, base
oils, greases and lube base stocks,”
Kongkrapan explained.
Currently, the largest application
segment of Group IV and Group
V lubricants is in engine oils and is
expected to increase even more as
OEMs increasingly endorse the use
of synthetic engine oils, coupled with
the growing automotive market in
Asia, in particular India and China,
as well as in South America, specifi-
cally Brazil.
Novel solutions
and technologies
Elevance’s Inherent™
Technology
“In the past, olefin metath-
esis was widely used in the chemi-
cal industry but with non-polar
molecules,” said Gerhardt. “What
is innovative about the metathesis
catalyst that Elevance uses is that
they work with polar species, such as
vegetable oils.”
Inherent™ renewable building
blocks’ versatile chain lengths and
di-functional structures (containing
both ester and olefin functionality)
enable the synthesis of lubricant
components suitable for greases,
metalworking fluids and industrial
and transportation lubricants.
Using natural plant-based oils,
compounds are synthesized, offering
superior performance at a competi-
tive cost, partly because it uses less
energy to produce than fossil-based
oils. The Elevance process is agnostic
towards a specific vegetable oil as
long as there is some unsaturation.
Palm, soybean, canola or rapeseed oil
can be used, as well as jatropha.
The Elevance Aria™ WTP 40 is
a high-viscosity base stock, wherein
the composition and properties of an
ester and a PAO are combined into a
single molecule to provide differenti-
ated performance in broad markets,
such as engine and gear lubricants,
compressors, industrial and hydrau-
lic fluids and greases.
Aside from the specialty chemical
stream such as the Inherent™ renew-
able building blocks, it has the natural
olefin stream and the oleochemical
stream. The company has an op-
erational plant in Gresik, Indonesia,
with a capacity of 180,000 mtpy and
another plant in Natchez, Miss., USA,
that is being converted from a bio-
diesel plant to a bio-refinery. When
completed in 2016, this plant will have
a capacity of 310,000 mtpy. Gerhardt
anticipates that by 2016, Elevance will
have a total production capacity of
nearly 500,000 mtpy.
ExxonMobil’s Molecule
Benders
ExxonMobil Chemical is cer-
tainly one of the leaders in synthetic
base stocks, having been in this
business for more than 55 years.
However, the company does not rest
on its laurels and continues to drive
innovation.
To meet the market challenges,
ExxonMobil has developed synthetic
base stocks such as the SpectraSyn
Elite
TM
metallocene polyalphao-
lefin (mPAO), which is available
in 65 cSt and 150 cSt. Accord-
ing to Rinderknecht, mPAO base
stocks comprise as much as 25% of
high-viscosity PAO sales across the
industry and are growing.
“Although mPAO utilizes the
same type of linear, alpha olefin
feedstocks used in conventional PAO
manufacture, differences in structure
were achieved using a proprietary
metallocene catalyst process. In
this case, the result is a PAO with a
narrowmolecular weight range with
improved shear stability, a higher
viscosity index and lower pour point.
That is another example of how
chemists, which we call ‘molecule
benders,’ are using innovation to
create newmolecules that provide
some favorable attributes on the end
product. That's what we do; that's our
space to play in,” said Rinderknecht.
“Diversity of feedstock or
feed flexibility is also an important
differentiator of our products from
others,” said SkipThomas, global
market segment manager, synthetics
