Lubricants dewaxing

Methyl ethyl ketone is essentially intended for solvent uses, in direct or indirect form, chiefly in paints and resins, nitrocellulose varnishes, adhesives and inks, and also for lubricant dewaxing. Its average commercial specifications are listed in Table lOtlO. 

NFPA Health 2, Flammability 3, Reactivity 1 Storage Store in well-ventilated area bond and ground metal containers in storage area Uses Solvent for resins, paints, protective coatings, varnishes, nitrocellulose, lacquers, printing inks, adhesives, cosmetics extraction solvent (mineral processing, metal, uranium from fission prods.) process solvent (lubricant dewaxing) mfg. of methyl amyl alcohol ... 

C4H8O, CH3COCH2CH3. Colourless liquid with a pleasant odour, b.p. 80°C. It occurs with propanone in the products of the destructive distillation of wood. Manufactured by the liquid or vapour phase dehydrogenation of 2-butanol over a catalyst. Used as a solvent, particularly for vinyl and acrylic resins, and for nitrocellulose and cellulose acetate, also for the dewaxing of lubricating oils. U.S. production 1978 300 000 tonnes. 

Although lubricant base stocks have been subjected to dewaxing processes, they still contain large amounts of paraffins that result in a high pour point for the oil. In the paragraph on the cold behavior of diesel fuels, additives were mentioned that modify the paraffin crystalline system and oppose the precipitation of solids. 

Urea has the remarkable property of forming crystalline complexes or adducts with straight-chain organic compounds. These crystalline complexes consist of a hoUow channel, formed by the crystallized urea molecules, in which the hydrocarbon is completely occluded. Such compounds are known as clathrates. The type of hydrocarbon occluded, on the basis of its chain length, is determined by the temperature at which the clathrate is formed. This property of urea clathrates is widely used in the petroleum-refining industry for the production of jet aviation fuels (see Aviation and other gas-TURBINE fuels) and for dewaxing of lubricant oils (see also Petroleum, refinery processes). The clathrates are broken down by simply dissolving urea in water or in alcohol. 

Lubricants. Petroleum lubricants continue to be the mainstay for automotive, industrial, and process lubricants. Synthetic oils are used extensively in industry and for jet engines they, of course, are made from hydrocarbons. Since the viscosity index (a measure of the viscosity behavior of a lubricant with change in temperature) of lube oil fractions from different cmdes may vary from +140 to as low as —300, additional refining steps are needed. To improve the viscosity index (VI), lube oil fractions are subjected to solvent extraction, solvent dewaxing, solvent deasphalting, and hydrogenation. Furthermore, automotive lube oils typically contain about 12—14% additives. These additives maybe oxidation inhibitors to prevent formation of gum and varnish, corrosion inhibitors, or detergent dispersants, and viscosity index improvers. The United States consumption of lubricants is shown in Table 7. 

MEK is also used iu solvent-based adhesives, iu printing ink formulations, as a solvent iu magnetic tape manufacture, and is the most common solvent used iu dewaxing lubricating oils. Of all these appHcations only an increasing consumption of magnetic tapes is likely to grow ia methyl ethyl ketone use. 

In the propane process, part of the propane diluent is allowed to evaporate by reducing pressure so as to chill the slurry to the desired filtration temperature, and rotary pressure filters are employed. Complex dewaxing requires no refrigeration, but depends on the formation of a soHd urea—/ -paraffin complex which is separated by filtration and then decomposed. This process is used to make low viscosity lubricants which must remain fluid at low temperatures (refrigeration, transformer, and hydraulic oils) (28). 

Lubricating Oil Manufacture This consists of solvent deasphalting, phenol treating, and solvent dewaxing. In dewaxing, waxy lube is diluted with a solvent such as propane or methyl ethyl ketone (MEK), and cooled to crystallize the wax which is then removed by filtration. 

Methyl ethyl ketone may also he produced hy the catalyzed dehydrogenation of sec-hutanol over zinc oxide or brass at about 500°C. The yield from this process is approximately 95%. MEK is used mainly as a solvent in vinyl and acrylic coatings, in nitrocellulose lacquers, and in adhesives. It is a selective solvent in dewaxing lubricating oils where it dissolves the oil and leaves out the wax. MEK is also used to synthesize various compounds such as methyl ethyl ketone peroxide, a polymerization catalyst used to form acrylic and polyester polymers and methyl pentynol by reacting with acetylene ... 

The residues from the vacuum distillation can also be refined to provide very viscous lubricants. The residues from paraflmic base oils are generally solvent extracted and dewaxed. The main use of these products (bright stocks) is as blending components for heavy lubricants. Thus residues from naphthenic base oils, which are also used as blending components for heavy lubricants, are normally not extracted. 

LTFT syncrude has significant chemicals potential in the field of linear paraffins and waxes, with some potential for olefin and oxygenate chemicals too. It is also well suited for the production of lubrication oils by catalytic dewaxing. 

MLDW [Mobil lube dewaxing] A catalytic process for removing waxes (long-chain linear aliphatic hydrocarbons and alkyl aromatic hydrocarbons) from lubricating oil. Developed by Mobil Research Development Corporation and operated at Mobil Oil refineries since 1981. Eight units were operating in 1991. 

See also Josephson entries Low temperature superconductors (LTS) Lube basestocks, dewaxing of, 16 844 Lube oil additives, maleic anhydride derivatives as, 15 512. See also Lubricant (lube) additives Lube oil sulfonates... 

Catalytic dewaxing, in which straight-chain paraffin hydrocarbons are selectively cracked on zeolite-type catalysts, and the lower-boiling reaction products are separated from the dewaxed lubricating oil by fractionation. 

Propane dewaxing a process for dewaxing lubricating oils in which propane serves as solvent. 

Solvent dewaxing removes wax from lubricating oil stocks, promoting crystallization of the wax. Solvents include furfural, phenol, cresylic acid-propane (DuoSol), liquid sulfur dioxide (Eleleanu process), B,B-dichloroethyl ether, methyl ethyl ketone, nitrobenzene, and sulfur-benzene. The process yields de-oiled waxes, wax-free lubricating oils, aromatics, and recovered solvents. 

Twenty-five years ago the dewaxing processes available to the refiner of lubricating oils were the cold pressing method applicable only to low viscosity distillates and the cold settling and centrifuge methods applicable to certain residual oils. A vast amount of... 

Consideration of installation costs cannot be restricted to the solvent refining step. A residuum of 460° F. flash point usually will contain all usable lubricating oil. In addition to the cost of solvent extraction facilities, the expense of equipment to fractionate the oil into usable cuts, to deasphalt, to dewax, and to clay filter, all must be... 

Furby (12) has developed a method for evaluating stocks in the lubricating oil range that results in a breakdown of components into asphaltenes, resins, wax, and dewaxed oil and provides a yield-viscosity index relationship for the dewaxed oil. The author has found such analyses very useful and inexpensive for evaluating a large number of potential lubricating oil stocks. Furby s method utilizes petroleum ether to precipitate asphaltenes, a fuller s earth-petroleum ether fractionation to isolate resins, methyl ethyl ketone-benzene dewaxing on the deasphalted-deresinified material to separate wax, and an adsorption fractionation to provide cuts from which the yield-viscosity index relationship for dewaxed, solvent-refined oil is obtained. 

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