Reducing the environmental impact of used lubricating oil through the production of fuels by pyrolysis

Abstract A large amount of used lubricant oil (ULO) is produced annually. ULO is one of the most major issues of the environment due to the metal contents and other hazardous contaminants. The objective of this paper is to investigate applying the pyrolysis technique for ULO to be recycled and hence extend its life cycle. Pyrolysis is one of several techniques where the waste materials are cracked. In this study, Pyrolysis was run into a high-pressure parallel autoclave with and without catalyst at 550 °C in the absence of air. The pyrolysis products of ULO without catalyst, are gases, liquid fuels, and coke of 5.4, 90.6 and 4 wt% respectively, while the yield of the same products gases, liquid fuel and coke are 4, 90.7, and 3.2 wt% respectively, using 2% by weight aluminum oxide catalyst. The liquid fuels were subjected to atmospheric distillation to separate jet and diesel fuels. In the case of using a catalyst, the produced jet fuel increased, however, the diesel fraction increased without using the catalyst. The freezing points of the jet fuels with and without using catalysts are −52 and −53 °C respectively. The cloud points of diesel fraction with and without using catalyst are −2 and −4 respectively.