Lubezine Volume 8 * NOVEMBER 2013 - JANUARY 2014 | Page 13

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Viscometrics P.24
from used oils. Large users of lubricants have
serious problems of disposal of the used oils
they generate. As a result, the used oils are
collected and stored in vertical tanks and
thereafter they are subjected to vibration and
filtration to remove the solid particles which
include carbon. The base oils do not undergo
any chemical change and so contain the
cancer causing properties of used oils. Other
dangers include impurities like glycols from
brake fluid and engine coolants, transformer
oils, gear oils and additives that are used in
grease which might include lead.
The impurities in each base oil batch vary
from one batch to another depending on the
source of the used oil. It is for this reason they
cannot be used for formulating quality lubricants as the quality of the finished lubricant
cannot be predicted.
Furthermore, some of the impurities interfere with the performance of the lubricants.
For example, glycol will make the finished
lubricant thicken faster than a similar product made from virgin base oils.
Of major concern is that the mitumba base
oils are industrial wastes. And according to
the Basel convention signed in 1992, these
base oils should not be transferred across borders without approval of the receiving country at the request from the exporting country.
The Basel convention further advocates that
such hazardous material be used at the source
country as fuel materials in cement kilns.
The Basel convention by the United
Nation’s Environmental Program (UNEP) was
initiated when it was discovered that developed countries were increasingly disposing
their industrial waste in under-developed

countries who until recently did not fathom
the grave effects of recycled base oils.
This begs the question: Why are we still
importing substandard and harmful base
oils? First off, they present a cheaper option
for consumers who dare to use these base
oils since they are 30 to 40% cheaper than
the virgin base oils. Other beneficiaries of
this harmful trend are the blenders who are
making handsome profits at the expense of
genuine industry players. The reality is however, that it is all is false economics as far as
the end-user is concerned. Whereas a product
of equal quality made from virgin base oil can
give you a drain interval of X kilometers; the
product made from recycled base oil will give
you 1/3X kilometers. This means the end-user
uses 3 times more oil and 3 times more filters,
all these are disposed of in the environment
eventually contaminating both ground and
underground water.

The Kenya Bureau of
Standards reacted to the
influx of the substandard
lubricants by setting the
minimum specifications
for lubricants, a move
that has been taken by
the other East African
authorities of quality
standards.

As they say 1 liter of used oil contaminates
1 Million liters of water. With Kenya being
a water stressed country, there’s no doubt
that recycled base oils are a real threat to the
increasingly scarce water sources.
A good example is the use of recycled base
oils in lubricating the power saws chains that
are used in the forests which are the main
water catchment areas. Because these oils are
poorly formulated and cheap, the usage is
very high further expo ͥ