Venezuelan petrochemical and environmental management company Petromaca’s rerefinery is the latest used lubricant recycling project to spring up in South America.
More than 900,000 metric tons of oil is used in vehicles and ships in Venezuela per year. The federal government is set on solving the problem of how to dispose of those lubricants once they are used, and its solution is to process the material to turn it back into a raw material for manufacturing new lubricants.
Officials claim the facility has capacity to process 90,000 metric tons per year of used oil and that 97% of its yield is base oil that can be used to produce lubricants. It has capacity to store 90,000 tons of waste oil.
The facility is expected to process 30%-40% of the country’s used motor oil by 2026, local paper Mundo Oriental reported the Environment Minister Josue Lorca as saying.
Petromaca plans to work with a network of public and private sector used oil producers, including automotive workshops, car washes, service stations and industrial companies. The company is also looking at secondary stockpilers that store hazardous oil waste until it arrives at Petromaca facilities.
The Petromaca refinery joins other projects in South America, such as a program carried out by Buenos Aires-based waste management group Quimiguay across 17 municipalities in Argentina. The Argentinean company recovers more than 7,000 tons per year of used mineral oils, coming from industries, workshops and lubrication centers.
Globally, governments are considering waste oil as a strategic resource to mitigate imports of base oil.