Kluber Lubrication participates in the Gear Oil LOOP project

40 percent of waste oil from industrial processes can today be reprocessed into base oils. However, the technological processes for these procedures are not sophisticated enough to reclaim the valuable base materials for high-performance lubricants from waste oil and use them to produce new long-life lubricants.

With the joint research project, the consortium aims to develop a recycling process and a gear oil that is especially suitable for recyclability and contains at least 50 percent recycled base oil. The aim is to demonstrate how an industrially and economically feasible recycling process could work.

This goal is challenging, not least because a recyclable gear oil and the recycling process are being developed and tested at the same time. This dual development strand requires intensive cooperation between all partners along the development and value chain.

In addition to lubricant development and lubricant recycling, important phases include testing the application behaviour of the lubricants in gearboxes and bearings as well as fundamental studies on friction and wear behaviour to confirm that the developed lubricants can keep up with conventional, ie non-recycled gear oils in terms of performance and durability. The sustainability of the closed loop concept will also be evaluated, taking into account raw materials, manufacturing and recycling processes and the performance of the lubricants.

With this project, the GearOil-LOOP consortium aims to create a circular economy for gear oils in which the fossil raw materials used can be used for as long as possible and cause as little waste and CO2 emissions as possible. The project consortium is opening up a new field of circular economy with recyclable higher-viscosity gear oils and the necessary recycling technologies.

The project will run for three years and is publicly funded by the German Federal Office of Economics and Climate Protection (Bundesamt fur Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK).