Seems our new work vocabulary repurposes or changes the meanings of terms we have used for years. The one I hear most often these days (its meaning depending on the context in which it’s used) is “sustainability”. When you look for a definition of sustainability, it all seems simple and straightforward at first: “the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level.” Turns out there is a bit of new vocabulary to learn before the current definition of sustainability allows a full understanding of why you see or hear so much about such a simple concept. It’s been used endlessly around the lubrication industry for years, but has now managed to worm its way into most industries and businesses, especially if you do business on an international level or deal with governmental agencies and regulations.
Since the early 2000’s, countries and governments have been rolling out legislation and regulations designed to balance economic and ecological sustainability, with the goal of achieving social sustainability. When businesses are confronted with the new regulations and penalties for non-compliance, they go into risk-aversion mode and tend to overreact to seek compliance. It’s the growth of the sustainability compliance culture that gets more expensive and complicated every year with new rules and regulations, taking away from the core business of the company, which is maintaining growth and profitability. When a company has hundreds or thousands of employees and multiple facilities, the resources to do this are usually available and counted as the cost of doing business. For a company or service provider that doesn’t have as many resources or finances to waste, complying and prospering can be a challenge.
In this country, most businesses talk a lot, take minimal action, and have lots of excuses for not doing anything, from a general misunderstanding of how sustainability can be a positive element of how you do business, and can save time or make a profit when implemented in a practical manner. For sustainability to be properly integrated into your business operations (regardless of size or number of employees), the concept needs to be embedded in your ambitions and expectations for the business, so it becomes part of the strategy for success and improved profitability.
For those in the transmission repair or service business, strategies and opportunities that come together that have the potential to meet sustainability compliance goals without causing undue complexity or cost can be attractive. One is obviously how we handle and recycle mechanical components, and the other is how we use, dispose of, and recycle our constant stream of new and used transmission fluids.
The lubrication industry has gradually delivered a functional vision of sustainability by reducing the energy required to produce the high-quality lubricants we have come to expect, improving efficiency by enhancing the base oils and the antiwear properties of transmission fluid with the use of carefully formulated additive packages prolonging the life of the transmission and fluid allowing the extended warranties the OEM’s now require to meet their own sustainability aspirations (often at the expense of the consumer and transmission durability and longevity when ultra-low viscosity ATF is formulated for fuel efficiency, but that’s a subject for another time).
The other overlooked aspect of the value chain, when you look at “from the oil well to the finished products”, is the reality that lubrication manufacturing companies fall in the middle between the raw material producers and the transmission shop or OEM that is the end use of the products they manufacture. What has happened over the last 50 years (driven by sustainability) has had a huge impact on how shops handle and dispose of used ATF and recycle hard parts.
I have seen the transmission industry shift its perspective as we changed what we did with recycling hard parts like valve bodies, converters, and valuable used transmission cores, along with the waste stream of used ATF generated by every shop as they conducted their normal operations. When I started in this business, every shop had a storage area for used transmissions and hard parts to ensure the availability of “spares” in the event something broke or needed to be replaced before it did. New parts were expensive and sometimes hard to get in a timely fashion, so having an inventory of suitable used parts was a viable way to do business (more survival than sustainability, which was sort of the same thing at the time). It was a different world, and it worked.
Remanufacturing hard parts like torque converters and valve bodies wasn’t the standard procedure it is today, as were rebuilt transmissions with extended warranties, but it was quickly heading in that direction by the 1980s.
When it came to used ATF, the environmental movement and government regulations totally changed the rules for managing and proper disposal of used ATF, which became an even bigger challenge for small shops trying to prosper in a changing environment with fines and penalties for not doing the right thing, and big brother (EPA) was looking over your shoulder to make sure you complied.
My first experience with large volumes of used ATF was working at a large fleet shop that generated several hundred gallons every few months. There was a bulk used oil tank on the premises for all used oils like hydraulic fluid, heating oil, and engine oil, but I noticed the service technicians working on automatic transmissions were careful to maintain separate used ATF storage for what I found out was a desirable commodity when it came time to dispose of the used transmission fluid. This was my first experience with what we came to call “up” recycling or “down” recycling.
We had several willing customers for the used ATF that wanted to re-use the higher quality used ATF for a different purpose than originally intended because the higher quality components used to make the ATF made it suitable for re-purpose by them, and they were willing to pay more for the used ATF than the bulk oil buyer was willing to pay. One “buyer” filtered it, added deodorant, and sold it as a lubricant for air tools; another guy used it to flush equipment and engines from construction and farming equipment he salvaged after one of the frequent floods we regularly experienced in South Central Texas. The buyer from the county road maintenance department wanted it for spraying on dusty dirt roads and water-filled ditches to control mosquitoes (it was a different time). Seems there was a big demand for a cheap used lubricant like ATF that could be “up” cycled and repurposed for a task that had never occurred to me.
Since it was my job to make sure the used oil (regardless of where it came from) went away, there was a short period when the transmission service technicians and I had a nice thing going on, and we all put a little money in our pockets. Management and the EPA eventually figured out what we were doing, and that soon went away, but I saw the potential for high-quality used ATF to be of more value than I previously thought.
Prior to that, it all went into the bulk used oil tank or oil dump, was “down”- cycled, and was mainly used to fire oil-burning heaters during the cold season. This is where sustainability starts to make sense: you conclude that there are different paths to sustainability, each with its own solutions and rationales that have the potential to add value to the shop’s operations.
We fast-forward 50 years, and improper disposal of used transmission oil is considered a serious environmental violation, with penalties and fines for improper handling and disposal of the waste oil. What is happening today, regardless of whether it is discarded, used in oil heaters as a low-grade fuel, or sold to re-refiners to be processed into base oils for new lubricants, involves a process of effective collection and storage with the goal of preserving used oil quality.
Re-refiners of used oil only want high-quality used engine oils and ATF because the quality of the waste oil directly influences the suitability of the used engine oil/transmission fluids used to produce high-quality re-refined base oils. There are several re-refining technologies (filtration, solvent extraction, thin-film evaporation, hydrotreating, and hydrocracking) that determine the quality of the final base oil product.
In the past, most re-refined base oil was Group I and was suitable for older, now-discontinued, or retired oil specifications. Demand for this type of base oil has declined, and refineries that produce it are closing. Recent advances in solvent extracting and hydrotreating technologies that meet or exceed the quality of base oil derived from virgin crude oils have dominated new startups following the decline of Group I base oils used in modern automotive lubricants.
For base oils suitable for current ATF requirements (Group II and III), hydrocracking refineries are coming online every month to handle the growing demand for sustainable base oils that reduce the dependency on virgin crude oils and meet the sustainability aspirations of the oil companies.
Perhaps the biggest challenge the re-refined base oils currently have is the perception of them as a quality product. Advances in re-refining technologies have significantly improved product quality, with equal performance and competitive pricing. Today, many lubricant blenders and packagers are using re-refined base oils in their ATF and engine oil blends. The process works well for all involved: lubricant marketers can enhance their sustainability credentials, and end users have quality transmission fluids at reduced cost. It’s a winning opportunity for all involved.
The history of used ATF and its use for re-refined base oils is a 50-year journey from waste oil of no value to used oil of significant worth. From being a serious pollutant to a high-quality rerefined base oil product. If that isn’t a world-class example of sustainability, then I’ve missed the meaning and intent of the whole process. In a world where sustainability is used to define competitiveness, reduce emissions, conserve resources, and drive the circular economy, the transmission service and repair industry does a great job of handling and implementing sustainability.
