Neol Copper Technologies is confident it will change the lubricant industry forever. The additive innovation startup based in the United Kingdom is developing a copper salt anti-wear additive that finds it origins in research carried out in the former Soviet Union. After a long journey from behind the Iron Curtain, the research about copper is disseminating throughout the industry, but there are some weighty obstacles to move before Neol’s belief becomes business.
In the 1950s, a group of engineers led by Professor Dmitry Garkunov happened upon two phenomena—the selective transfer of copper ions in the process of friction, otherwise known as the “wearlessness effect,” and hydrogen wear of metals.
Garkunov went on to work with railway engineer Sergei Mamykin to investigate wear on Russian Railways rolling stock. They turned to the properties of copper to develop a range of lubricants. Copper’s ability to shed atoms that form films and reduce wear was discovered earlier in the century during an analysis of refrigerator compressors.
Neol’s innovation, called CuGlide, hinges on these two little-known phenomena and builds on the work done by Garkunov and Mamykin.
Could hydrogen wear be a unifying explanation for several wear effects, and is copper the anti-wear solution? The hypothesis is persuasive. White etching cracks are found on the surface of bearings, which are weakened by the diffusion of hydrogen atoms from within. Micro-pitting is surface fatigue occurring in gears. It is thought to be caused by hydrogen atoms from water in the grease causing hydrogen embrittlement. Hydrogen embrittlement is a reduction in the ductility of a metal due to absorbed hydrogen atoms that are small enough to permeate solid metals.
Neol’s CEO and cofounder Leyla Alieva said that few people she meets in the industry have heard of these phenomena.
Rafe Britton, an Australian tribologist and lubrication consultant—who is also an independent advisor to the company—thinks that Neol is essentially describing existing wear modes such as white etching cracks and micro-pitting.
“In very basic terms, I would call it white etch cracking. So the same phenomena that we’re seeing in wind turbine gear oils I think is what they’re describing,” Britton told Lubes’n’Greases. “We have perfectly good explanations for how wear occurs in gears.”
Matthias Scherge, at the Fraunhofer IWM MikroTribologie Center in Karlsruhe, Germany, is similarly cautious about a one-size-fits-all explanation for numerous wear effects.
“It’s unsolved. But hydrogen as a single answer to the phenomenon is not enough,” Scherge told Lubes’n’Greases.
Performance
Whatever it is called and whatever the cause, Britton is satisfied that CuGlide can do what Neol claims it does—prevent wear. Neol has been building a substantial body of real-world test data to back up its claims, as well as tests done by predecessors.
The company claims CuGlide can help achieve fuel efficiency gains of 10% in several applications.
The company’s fully synthetic monograde marine engine oils also boast a longer oil change interval by up to three times. This, the company explains, is largely possible because of the additive’s detergency. So if that is the case, it means the potential to save the shipping industry billions of dollars per year.
The same claim is made in automotive applications. This is an indicative average number derived from the self-assessment of a few thousand private vehicle owners using their oils, Alieva explained.
“This kind of fuel efficiency improvement is not achievable in modern new engines; anything within 1% is already considered a miracle. Older engines are less efficient,” she said.
It is no surprise that automobile engines become less fuel efficient as they get older. A 2010 study by the University of Michigan found 10-year-old engines can burn up to 35% more fuel compared with new engines. Since then, engine design and fuel efficiency has improved, too.
Not all of that reduced efficiency is due to friction prevention. Sludge, varnishing and wear all contribute, and it is these factors that Neol says make a large contribution to the efficiency claims.
This is where the company thinks the wearlessness effect seems to come into play. A copper film deposited on surfaces potentially “heals existing defects on the friction surface … effectively restoring the original efficiency.”
“The actual fuel efficiency improvement number will vary from engine to engine depending on its condition. We saw 4% overall improvement in a motorcycle engine, 10% in passenger cars, 2% in trucks when they go on autopilot (less wear due to stationary operating mode), overall, 12% in trucks including winter months, 15%-20% in mining dump trucks with over 30,000 motor hours of run,” Alieva said.
Drop Out
In a 2016 paper, Scherge lays out several problems with copper anti-wear additives. One such issue is its poor stability in suspension and dispersion. Particles can “accumulate, dropout and form sediments,” which means it “cannot provide any positive performance benefits,” he wrote.
The paper concluded that the mechanism of copper particles and film formation in systems operating in mixed or boundary lubrication regimes remains unclear.
David Wilson, Neol’s head of products, disagrees with Scherge’s findings.
“Especially engine oil additives, with lots of dispersants and detergents, they’re not very clear, stable products by nature. And when you subject them to various temperature stresses, a lot of additives will have materials that will drop out and form sediment,” Wilson told Lubes’n’Greases.
Wilson pointed out that many lab tests do not properly simulate actual field operating conditions. The speeds, loads and contact pressures in these tests often produce very high wear rates that are unrepresentative of real-world conditions. As a result, the additives cannot function properly or provide any real benefit. In practice, the wear rates in modern engines and gearboxes are ultra-low.
“Outside observers may think this additive is new, but there are decades of tests results and real-world application data,” he added.
“If you look at the last 50-60 years of this product, there’s been a lot of research, a lot of development, a lot of testing, knowledge generation, experimentation,” Wilson said. “We’re a new company, with a very proven established product. Only now it has the opportunity to come to light.”
In April, Neol’s SAE 10W-30 heavy-duty diesel engine oil went through a 464-hour performance and endurance test in an 11.8-liter Cummins engine. The no-SAPS (sulfated ash, phosphorus and sulfur), no-ZDDP (zinc dialkyldithiophosphate) oil performed to performance specifications, according to the OEM test protocol.
Previous Attempts
Copper-based additives—both on the micro and nano scale—have been known for decades, Scherge wrote in his paper.
“Most of those companies I know have already experimented with those additives. And some of them even included the additive,” he told Lubes’n’Greases.
One such is Nanol, a Finnish company that markets a nano-scale copper-based additive that forms a protective layer of copper ions on the friction surfaces.
Nanol has similar challenges to Neol. According to Sherge, copper does not perform too well on the micro scale due to oxidation.
“However, when you have copper as a colloid nanoparticle, it works,” Scherge said.
Scherge has been involved in testing that found copper was effective at blocking the passage of hydrogen atoms through a barrier between a hydrogen atom generator and a recombination cell treated with a copper-containing additive package.
“I say it really works when it’s done properly,” he said.
Barrier to Entry
Why copper hasn’t broken through into the mainstream may be a combination of blender caution, OEM risk aversion and established, effective substances into which multimillions of dollars have been invested to date in development and testing.
“Most of the oil producers use complete additive packages. An addition to these packages would interfere with the entire development process. This is extremely time consuming and expensive, since many tests have to be passed,” Scherge said.
Here the additive startup hit a brick wall. Additive manufacturing is dominated by a small number of well-known players with the financial resources to invest in expensive lab testing. The financial barrier to entry into many segments is very high.
Getting a novel additive to market is expensive and risky. New products are an exception. A basic program of American Petroleum Institute passenger car motor oil tests plus original equipment manufacturer standards can cost US $1 million. A complex program for a European heavy-duty diesel engine oil with European Automobile Manufacturers Association and OEM specifications can cost $2 million. Add an unproven additive and the sky is the limit.
There is also a well-known substance that does the job already in numerous applications—ZDDP. OEMs and lubricant makers have sunk time and money into developing products with this additive, despite its toxicity. Naturally, they are reluctant to change course. And additive companies are quite happy their packages keep getting sold at volume.
Neol faces a further challenge in securing capital. Investors among the green tech community are allergic to any association with the oil industry.
“They say, ‘What? Lubricants?! That’s the territory of evil! We’re not sure we can be associated with internal combustion engines’,” Alieva joked. “This is something that’s going to live for another at least few decades. And this is something that at the moment is 20% of global CO2 emissions, and you don’t want to touch it?”
If the chemistry is as effective as Neol thinks—and the tests seem to back that up—then the product’s sustainability credentials are solid, and it should be an easy sell.
Simon Johns is an editor with Lubes’n’Greases. Contact him at Simon@LubesnGreases.com.