The Toronto Transit Commission awarded Safety-Kleen Canada Inc. a three year contract to recover and rerefine 600,000 liters (U.S. 159,000 gallons) of used lubricants generated annually by the commissions fleet. Terms of the contract announced last week were not disclosed.
Since 1989, the agencys fleet has used between 500,000 and 740,000 liters of Safety-Kleens rerefined lubricants annually. The interesting thing in this announcement is that we have been supplying lubricants to the Toronto Transit Commission for many, many years, Dale MacIntyre, vice president of refining for Safety-Kleen, told Lube Report. This is the first time weve been successful in getting the used oil back. So now it really is truly a closed-loop arrangement.
About 98 percent of the used lubricants Safety-Kleen picks up will be engine oils, MacIntyre said, and the vast majority of it will be heavy duty engine oils. Theres a small amount of PCMO in there, and very small amounts of transmission fluids and hydraulic fluids, he noted. The used lubricants will come primarily from the commissions fleet of passenger buses, MacIntyre continued, adding that the commission also has a very small fleet of gas engine cars and trucks used by supervisors.
According to Safety-Kleen, over three years it will rerefine 1.8 million liters of used Toronto Transit Commission lubricants and provide an equal amount of rerefined lubricants for use in the agencys vehicles. This will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3.9 million kilograms as compared to manufacturing the same lubricants from crude oil, the company stated. The greenhouse gas savings will be equivalent to taking 239 passenger vehicles off of the road annually.
Safety-Kleens Breslau, Ontario plant rerefines more than 150 million liters of used motor oil and industrial oils annually. It has an estimated 1,000 barrels per day of API Group I capacity and 800 b/d of Group II capacity.
The commission is responsible for all forms of local passenger transportation within the urban area of Toronto, except for railways incorporated under federal and provincial statutes, and taxis.