Philosophy in design - Motor Oil

[Overfill]

I dont know if any content of this has been explicitly posted before, but I was curious if there were some oil blenders on this site that might be willing to give some light on how they go about designing a blend.

I understand that there are criteria of upmost importance to any blending, such as cost, marketability, or flexibility between product groups, or just generally adding enough of this or that to meet a given specification. (I lump this more into the business end of the matter, although it is a significant matter of importance.)

However, is there any insight or comments with specific regards to the order of approach or how you approach an oil build when its application is a fairly technical engineering challenge? Do you try to incorporate service environment and parameters (i.e. surface roughness, surface speed, surface pressures, ect.) to try to apply components that best fit the overall environment at all?

Thank you in advance, those of you who are willing to respond.

 

[d00df00d]

I like these questions. Following.

 

[Tom NJ]

In my case, lubricant designed always started with Marketing, and since I headed both Marketing and R&D I was able to keep the ball all the way through. Most of my design work was with aviation and industrial synthetic lubricants, but the formulating approach was universal.

The oil starts with a list of goals and objectives. The goal(s) are usually simple, clear and straight forward, such as "Lowest cost oil meeting XYZ specification", or "Product that out-performs ABC competitor", or "Product that allows the following claims...", etc. Objectives are steps or milestones along the way, usually measurable and with time targets, such as "Define essential properties" or "Identify lowest cost potential ingredients" or "Design testing protocol and matrix" or Limit VI Improvers to
Goals and objectives are derived from the marketplace, after all, the main goal is to sell the stuff. You must know your customers, their problems, their needs, and their limits, and that is what the Marketing group are charged with. Carefully defining the product is the most critical step in the process, otherwise you can spend a year and oodles of dollars formulating a product that no one really wants or needs.

After the end product is fully defined and understood, Marketing meets with R&D to discuss the goals and objectives. This is where R&D educates Marketing as to what can realistically be achieved technically, and in what time frame. R&D then develops a formulation matrix and testing protocol that identifies potential ingredients, testing methods, and testing order. Usually the most critical and/or cheapest tests are done first so as to not waste money on a flawed formula and find out a year later. At this point Accounting, Legal, Purchasing, and Environmental & Regulatory need to get involved to calculate the raw material and manufacturing costs, make sure the test results legally support the claims, ascertain the long term availability of the ingredients, and assess the hazards and export limitations of the ingredients. Now R&D can begin formulating and testing against the matrix.

The formulating process is exciting and based on knowledge of the potential ingredients, test methods, and logic. It requires a methodology more than chemistry. Lots of surprises may (and usually do) occur during testing that may alter the goals & objectives and necessitate more meetings with Marketing and the various support departments. The formulation matrix and testing protocol may also change as test results come in. In the end, however, frequent communication and cooperation among the involved departments will usually lead to the desired product, or the dropping of the project if not reasonably achievable.

So formulating a lubricant, as with many other products based on recipes, is not an isolated effort by R&D chemists, but actually a companywide project exploiting a range of disciplines and cooperative efforts. Properly managed it is a fun and rewarding process.

 

[SonofJoe]

All of what TomNJ said with the following personal observations...

You need a vast appetite for risk.
You will never have sufficient budget.
You need to be comfortable with uncertainty.
You must accept that all bosses live in a fantasy world.
You need to be a good gambler.
You need to be very, very, very, very, very, very lucky.
You will at some point realise that what you're trying to do is actually impossible.
Accept you will upset EVERYONE & have no friends.

Apart from that, formulating engine oils is a doddle!

 

[4WD]

You need to accept that you did not reach as high as you could have

 

[Tom NJ]

Originally Posted by SonofJoe
All of what TomNJ said with the following personal observations...

You need a vast appetite for risk.
You will never have sufficient budget.
You need to be comfortable with uncertainty.
You must accept that all bosses live in a fantasy world.
You need to be a good gambler.
You need to be very, very, very, very, very, very lucky.
You will at some point realise that what you're trying to do is actually impossible.
Accept you will upset EVERYONE & have no friends.

Apart from that, formulating engine oils is a doddle!



Love it!!

 

[MolaKule]

IN my case (independent formulator and consultant) the usual customer is a blender that wants to introduce a lubricant or a series of lubricants, so we discuss:

A. What types of lubricant(s)?
B. Target viscosities
C. Budget and time frame for formulating and testing for coverage
D. 75% down and 25% when completed after budget proposal is accepted
E. Sign contract and NDA's.
F. Order base oils, additive packages, and other chemicals necessary for product development
H. Have fun

 

[oil_film_movies]

Originally Posted by SonofJoe
Apart from that, formulating engine oils is a doddle!
Originally Posted by Tom NJ
Properly managed it is a fun and rewarding process.

Frustrations as SonOfJoe described are common to almost all engineering projects, not just oil of course. (BTW, Amercans don't know what "doddle" is.) There are positive events that do actually happen, so optimists are right too. A roller coaster ride.

Thing about oil, or any product, is that cost should be minimized. For example, if I was CEO of GruntWorks Oil Company & SonOfJoe was exceeding SN tests by a lot for his new (evolved, really) SN-marketed oil, I'd ask him to just pass all the SN tests by no more than 10% over, with the cheapest ingredients he has ever heard of. Of course any good formulator already knows that.

What oils have confounding marketing & formulations? As in, what oils out there make you wonder what they could be thinking? For example, some have puzzled about why several Japanese oil makers like to dump a lot of moly in their oils when there seem to be cheaper ways to make a dexos1-capable oil. Amsoil is another example, although most would agree they do market the Hades out of being better than the specs they cite, and get differentiation from that as a boutique oil. Ravenol is one that puzzles with expensive ingredients for their specs.

 

[SonofJoe]

Originally Posted by 4WD
You need to accept that you did not reach as high as you could have



Back in the '70s there was a Swedish tennis player called Bjorn Borg. Borg appeared out of nowhere and proceeded to annihilate everyone & anyone, including all the established 'stars' of the day. He won slam after slam after slam. Then one day, at the very peak of his career, he famously walked away from professional tennis, never to return.

Now you might judge that Bjorn Borg 'didn't reach as high as he could have' but I doubt he would see it in such crude, simplistic terms. He'd probably argue that there's a clarity of view you get from the very top of the mountain that lesser mortals can never, ever begin to comprehend, even if he explained it to you for a thousand years.

 

[SonofJoe]

Brian553,

You wanted philosophy. This one's a biggie so pay attention.

Engine oil formulation is very definitely NOT a team sport. If you decide to embark on this particular journey, you're going to need Doctor Who & his plucky female companion, not Captain bloody Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise!

My American cousins (of which there were far too many) were always doing that 'Go Team!' thing that only Americans do. They were singularly & unremittingly useless! I used to watch from this side of the pond as they would fail, over & over & over again. It was so sad to see.

 

[MolaKule]

Originally Posted by SonofJoe
Brian553,

You wanted philosophy. This one's a biggie so pay attention.

Engine oil formulation is very definitely NOT a team sport. If you decide to embark on this particular journey, you're going to need Doctor Who & his plucky female companion, not Captain bloody Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise!...



It depends on whether or not you formulate in a corporate setting or work as an independent formulator/consultant.

In a corporate setting, other team members can serve to repeat, validate, and share responsibilities, reducing the time from concept to useful product.

No one really works alone. Even as an independent formulator/consultant, one has to constantly keep in touch and communicate with others during the development process.

So Brian if you are interested in lubricant formulation, get a degree in chemistry or chemical engineering and join the S.T.L.E.

 

[Garak]

Would I be correct in assuming graduate degrees are more common in formulating?

 

[SonofJoe]

Originally Posted by Garak
Would I be correct in assuming graduate degrees are more common in formulating?


Yes. A graduate degree is generally the minimum entry ticket. You also get a lot of people with chemistry PhD's, especially in the AddCo's.

That said, I'm not that sure exactly how useful some of these higher qualifications actually are in the bizarre world of oil formulation. There's definitely a strong undercurrent of (unjustified) superiority, especially with the PhD mob that IMO positively hinders the formulation process. Almost all of these folks see 'lab work' or getting involved in the guts of dirty engines as some how beneath them; something for the lesser minions to do. Work with these people for a while and you quickly realise that there are massive gaps in their basic understanding of how oils work that a three piece suit & a fancy presentation just can't cover up!

 

[MolaKule]

Most formulators are looking at this from the "Macro" viewpoint whereas the PhD's are peering into the "micro-molecular" world.

In order to peer into the "micro-molecular" world you need to have advanced training in quantum chemistry, physical chemistry, and advanced analytical chemistry, the latter of which involves advanced instrumentation such as Mass Spectroscopy and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance instrumentation, to name a few.

I would venture that a B.S to M.S. is sufficient for formulation development but for additive chemistry development, a PhD is a given.

 

[d00df00d]

10/10 thread. Thanks to Brian for making it, and thanks to all who weighed in!