Petroleum additives enhance the properties of fuels and lubrication fluids to improve their performance and extend their life.  United States gross domestic product (GDP) was worth 17.9 Trillion US dollars in 2015 and estimates show that up to 4 percent of an industrialized country’s GDP is lost through friction and wear of mechanical parts.  This would equate to approximately 716 Billion US Dollars lost to friction and wear in 2015 in the US alone.  Frictional losses not only add to efficiency losses, but also contribute to automobile emissions.  A primary focus for petroleum additive development is fuel economy improvement through a reduction in frictional losses and increases in combustion efficiency.<br/>Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are actively developing new hardware technology to reduce friction and wear through conventional manufacturing techniques in addition to more sophisticated capabilities such as diamond like coatings (DLCs) and polymeric coatings.  In concert with hardware developments, improvements to lubricant formulations are being made to enable enhancements in efficiency, wear reduction and new hardware enablement.  Advances in lubricant technology have come both from improvements in base oil technology and the additive technology that is responsible for delivering performance across a broad range of operating conditions.<br/>There are typically over 15 different types of performance additives formulated in a finished lubricant, much of which are dependent on performance being delivered from different polymeric architectures.  As the demands on the lubricant performance have increased, so have the demands on the control of the architectures for performance polymers used in lubricant applications.  An assessment of the different types of polymeric lubricant additives will be provided with specific focus on the advancements in the lubricant industry for developing controlled architectures required for modern lubricants.<br/>

Performance polymers in the petroleum additives industry

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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