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Fifteen minutes with… Ian Taylor, Shell

Megatrends interview with Shell Lubricants’ Senior Technologist

Rachael Hogg discusses developing lubricants from the word go with Shell Lubricants’ Senior Technologist

Why is now the time to invest in low viscosity lubricants?
Primarily to get better fuel economy, but there has also been a realisation that, in the past, lubricant viscosities were on the conservative side. In Japan, OEMs have gone to much lower viscosities than in Europe or the US, there have not really been any detrimental effects but there have been benefits in terms of better fuel economy for Japanese vehicles.

How has the move from Euro V to Euro VI affected lubricant development?
There is an interesting side to this: the rest of the emissions legislation is focused more on after-treatment devices and we have to take some useful additives – sulphated ash, phosphorous and sulphur (SAPs) – out of oils, some of which provided wear protection. So when we go to a lower viscosity oil for better fuel consumption, we have to find some additives that still give wear protection but don’t contribute to this SAPs level, which affects the after-treatment compatibility.

Ian Taylor, Senior Technologist, Shell Lubricants’
Ian Taylor, Senior Technologist, Shell Lubricants’

Shell has been trying to change public perception of low viscosity and synthetic lubricants – how is this progressing?
Some are put off the use of synthetics by the price, or the worry that there may be other issues with them, but we have quite a lot of demonstration material which shows the benefit of synthetics in terms of fuel economy. In the past, ‘synthetics’ generally meant poly-alpha-olefins, which are quite expensive. There are a large number of alternatives now appearing like group two and group three based oils, which are more cost effective. Certainly in Europe for passenger cars, a lot of OEMs recommend synthetics or semi-synthetics, whereas 20 years ago it all used to be mineral oil.

There’s been a big shift, certainly in Europe, towards synthetic oils and there is enough data to support that they do what we think they do, and that’s before the potential of fines for OEMs comes in – that will change the economics even more in favour of synthetics.

How do reactions to low viscosity lubricants vary from region to region?
Japan has led the way in lower viscosity engine oils. To some extent, in the US they’ve gone to lower viscosity engine oils. In Europe, we’ve tended to go to lower viscosity oils but not quite as low as the US or Japan, primarily because certain markets have very demanding driving conditions. We have a lot of diesel cars in Europe, so we tend to have quite a lot of additives to give the required protection – and that tends to make the fuel economy performance slightly worse.

How have new low emission engines affected lubricant development?
We’ve seen a move to a lot more downsized 3-cylinder engines: having a smaller engine with the same power tends to put a lot more stress on the lubricant, so you need to put more antioxidant in the lubricant, and again think about protecting against wear.

Some solutions coming out are likely to make it even more difficult to lubricate the engine, which is going to make it more of a challenge to develop lubricants which work in these components.

The other thing which may happen is, particularly in Europe in 2020, CO2 limits of 95g/km are so severe that you may get different OEMs coming up with different solutions. We’ll need to be fairly nimble to be able to lubricate these different hardware solutions, which may appear in the marketplace.

How is Shell working as a design or development partner?
Many OEMs have realised that the lubricant, rather than just being an afterthought, is actually an essential design element. One problem that has happened in the past is that when OEMs design a new engine, they generally design it using the oil they currently use, so when the engine is launched years later it has effectively been developed on an oil which is out of date. If the OEM works with a lubricants company to develop both the engine and the oil at the same time, they potentially can get bigger benefits than if they just designed the engine. To a certain extent we can help design a lubricant which can get more out of their engine or transmission.

But it’s not solely OEMs that Shell is working with: we are involved with the Energies Technology Institute, a government private partnership trying to improve the fuel economy of transport fleets in the UK by 30%. The OEM involved has completely redesigned the truck as a system, allowing the lubricant temperature to go up to 120 degrees Celsius, because they can then do away with all the coolers and fans which take up quite a lot of fuel. They’re coming up with different solutions which help to improve truck fuel economy but if the end solution involves an increase in lubricant temperature then we need to make sure our lubricants survive.

What do you think will be the biggest trend that will affect lubricant products?
There are more and more novel materials being used in engines: in the past we only had to lubricate steel against steel, nowadays we’re seeing lots of coated components with ceramic or diamond-like carbon coatings which respond differently to lubricants, so we’re having to find the optimum product for these different materials.

Rachael Hogg

This article was first published in the Q4 2013 issue of Automotive World Megatrends Magazine. Follow this link to download the full issue

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