Volume 11 Issue 51

Safety-Kleen Builds Blending Plant

Safety-Kleen is pouring foundations for a $15 million blending plant at its East Chicago, Ind., rerefinery, which will enable it to produce more than 20 million gallons per year of finished lubricants. Its destined to be started up in July of next year, Scott Miller, Safety-Kleens East Chicago director of refining, told Lube Report. Theres a tremendous cost-savings logistically, not having to ship the base oil off site, and also for what we pay the third-party blender. And we take control over ...

Chevron Tests Quick-lube Quality

Chevron Lubricants begins a testing program this month to verify lubricants quality at its Havoline Xpress Lube, Texaco Xpress Lube and Havoline Builder facilities. The Product Integrity Assurance System aims to ensure product integrity by detecting potential contamination, mishandling and use of non-Chevron lubricants. Chevron will randomly pull samples of branded products stored in bulk tanks at branded facilities across the country. A third party laboratory will test the samples, and the res...

CalRecycle Blasts 3,000 Mile Habit

More than 40 percent of California residents still get oil changes every 3,000 miles or less, according to a survey by a state agency whose Check Your Number campaign is encouraging drivers to change their motor oil less often. In August, the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) conducted a randomly sampled telephone survey of 1,000 Californians about their motor oil change interval habits. The survey was part of research for the agencys Check Your Number campaign, launch...

Afton Opens R&D Lab in China

Afton Chemical opened a new fuel and lubricant additive laboratory in Suzhou, China, to provide customers and OEMs in Asia Pacific with technical services, including sample blending, physical and chemical analysis and performance testing. Afton said the new research and development laboratory was constructed at the Afton Chemical (Suzhou) Co. Ltd. manufacturing facility in Suzhou Industrial Park. The Suzhou manufacturing facility was one of four sites acquired by Afton through its 2010 acquisit...

Pale Oils Find Pan-American Home

JERSEY CITY, N.J. – Naphthenic base stocks in the Americas have gone from surplus to valued specialty in the past 25 years, and Calumet sees a bright future for them in the region. John Banach, lube sales manager, and Larry Buck, international sales manager, Calumet Specialty Products Partners, offered an overview of the pale oil market in the Americas at the ICIS Pan-American Base Oils & Lubricants Conference here Dec. 1. In 1986, Pan-American naphthenic production totaled 67,300 b...