Meeting the challenge with fuel-efficient lubricants

FOR BUSINESSES that depend on trucks, Shell developed heavy-duty diesel engine oils that not only protect the engine but also help lower running costs and increase reliability. photos by Charles E. Buban

Located just outside Shanghai in China, is a typical-looking truck stop. But there is nothing ordinary about this site located near the Cui Zhuan Road exit of G15 Jiajin Highway. On most days, some 300 trailer trucks would park here and instantly transform this area into a “small” community of drivers and operators, as well as their families.

Most of them are waiting for offers—job assignments that would enable them to earn at least $5 million (P218,000) a month, hauling all sort of products to any southern cities of China that are at least 1,000 kilometers away. They typically go back and forth along these same route for months, enduring extreme hardships.

“Interestingly, this is just a small truck stop that takes care of the southern routes. There are also truck stops for the northern routes as well as the western routes. Some of the larger truck stops in China could accommodate more than 1,000 trucks a day so one could just imagine the business opportunities that these sites generate for various businesses including lubricant suppliers,” explained one of the dispatchers who is in charge of receiving job offers and posting these on the centralized bulletin board.

Overtake

Indeed with the ever-growing trucking industry, China is poised to overtake the United States as the biggest market for commercial lubricants. This is why companies like Shell are in China, developing the next generation lubricant products.

In fact, Shell opened in March its third global center in Shanghai, which will be dedicated to research and development for lubricants and oils, after those in Hamburg (Germany) and Houston (Texas, United States).

“The Shanghai center reflects the direction of the Shell Lubricants business today and the central role that China plays in its long-term growth strategy,” said Dr. Selda Gunsel, VP of Shell’s Global Commercial Technology.

FOR BUSINESSES that depend on trucks, Shell developed heavy-duty diesel engine oils that not only protect the engine but also help lower running costs and increase reliability.

Lowering the viscosity of heavy-duty engine oils is the name of the game for the foreseeable future. Oil’s viscosity—the thickness of the engine oil—holds the key to pushing fuel consumption down and helping engine manufacturers meet the challenges placed in front of them by regulatory bodies that mandate increased fuel economy for trucks and lowered carbon dioxide emissions.

Well-positioned

Gunsel added that Shell is well-positioned to meet the anticipated growth in demand in China and nearby regions, saying that the center will help the company work more closely with customers as well as shape mutually beneficial

collaborations.

The new center will cover a wide range of product applications including passenger car motor oils, motorcycle oils, heavy-duty engine oils, transmission fluids, as well as industrial and speciality oils, greases, and even oils for the shipping sector.

As explained by Dr. Richard Tucker, global technology manager of Shell’s Commercial Lubricants and Fuels, lubricants play a significant role in fuel economy, and Shell scientists at the Shanghai center will be focused on cutting-edge technology technologies and how they can help original equipment manufacturers—the OEMs—meet stricter fuel economy regulations.

The challenge though, said Tucker, is to ensure the oil used by the industry still does its job of keeping an engine’s vital parts lubed and working properly, and that it does not decrease engine life when compared to using the  today’s standard 15W-40 engine oil.

Exciting time

“This is an exciting time to be in lubricants research. One of the most significant issues we are focusing on are developing low-viscosity formulations—we realize that if you go to lower viscosities, you enable improvements in fuel economy. This is why apart from searching for the right chemistry, we’re partnering with a number of OEMs to co-engineer vehicles and lubricants to understand more how lubricants interact within the engine,” Tucker said.

But lowering the viscosity of lubricants presents certain technical difficulties—the lower viscosity, the less an oil is able to protect moving mechanical parts, which in turn could contribute to hastening engine and drivetrain wear.

He explained that apart from wanting to achieve better fuel efficiency (when using lower-viscosity lubricants), truck drivers and operators would also want their vehicles to enjoy longer periods between oil changes (the more times a truck is under service, the fewer times it could be deployed for business). “Moreover, they also want these lubricants to help their trucks meet governmental regulations as well as climate change and associated health laws.”

Indeed, more and more people have realized that lubricants (like Shell’s Rimula R4x, Rimula R5LE, Rimula R5E and Rimula R6LME here), rather than just being an afterthought, are actually an essential component in meeting better fuel efficiency and longer engine and drivetrain life of a vehicle. “Lowering the viscosity of heavy-duty engine oils is the name of the game for the foreseeable future. And based on our recent tests around the world, low viscosity oils are capable of increasing fuel economy by 3.5 percent,” Tucker said.