Lubricating Base Oils from Fischer-Tropsch Wax and Waste Plastic

7 LUBRICATING BASE OILS FROM FISCHER-TROPSCH WAX AND WASTE PLASTIC 

Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technology converts synthesis gas produced by reforming of methane or coal gasification into waxy products. Long alkanes (-CH2 -chains) produced by using FT synthesis are chemically similar to polyethylene. Lubricating oils derived from isomerization of FT waxes are gaining interest due to increased demand for lubricants with the advanced performance and environmental benefits described earlier. 

Although FT waxes are high in quality, their availability over the next decade is expected to be limited. Therefore, there is an effort to find other sources of feedstocks of equal quality to co-process along with FT waxes, both to meet the demand and decrease the cost of lubricant products. Waste plastic is a potentially significant new source for such waxy feed. We have performed combined pyrolysis-hydroisomerization experiments, looking at the following feedstock options  

Polyethylene + polyethylene terephthalate (PET), where PET (e.g. soft-drink bottles) is one of the major non-PE plastics in municipal waste 

HOPE and LDPE were obtained from Chevron Phillips Chemical Company. PET was obtained by cutting up soft-drink bottles. ET wax was obtained from Moore Munger. 

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