PREMISE: Comparative Life Cycle Impacts of Bio- and Petro-Based Lubricants

这笔赠款由国家科学基金会的Premise计划提供，用于研究工业应用中用生物基(即植物衍生)润滑剂替代石油基润滑剂的相关问题。这种方法似乎是一种有吸引力的材料替代品；生物润滑剂是可再生的，相对无毒，可生物降解，比石油润滑剂更容易提取和加工，对环境的影响更小。然而，为了评估广泛使用这些替代品的社会、环境和技术效益和影响，必须进一步解决生物溶剂使用的三个方面：性能、监管和生命周期。使用各种标准化的测试程序和数据来源，本研究将检查这三个领域，并将结果与石油衍生润滑油的类似信息进行比较。这项研究涉及一个由来自学术界、政府和工业部门的成员组成的多学科小组，该小组拥有共同的专业知识，以解决与生物和石油为基础的润滑剂相关的各种问题。该项目的主要目标是开始收集数据并将调查结果纳入对生物溶剂作为石油产品替代材料的价值和成本的全面评估，并建立一个框架，将所取得的成果推广到具体应用中。如果能够证明生物清洗剂与目前使用的矿物油一样有效，具有成本竞争力，并导致较少的环境问题，那么收集的许多数据很可能可以外推到各种工业应用中。从…

This grant the National Science Foundation's PREMISE program provides funds to examine issues associated with the substitution of petroleum-based lubricants with bio-based (i.e. plant-derived) lubricants for industrial applications. Such an approach would appear to be an attractive material substitution; biolubricants are renewable, relatively nontoxic, biodegradable, and more easily extracted and processed than petrolubricants, with fewer environmental consequences. There are, however, three aspects of the use of biolubricants that must be addressed further in order to estimate the societal, environmental, and technological benefits and impacts of the widespread use of these substitutes: performance, regulatory, and life cycle. Using a variety of standardized testing procedures and data sources, this research will examine these three areas, comparing results with similar information for petroleum-derived lubricants.This research involves the assembly of a multidisciplinary group with members from academia, government, and the industrial sector, that possesses the collective expertise to address the diverse issues associated with bio- and petro-based lubricants. The main goals of the project are to begin the process of gathering data and integrating findings into a comprehensive assessment of the value and costs of biolubricants as replacement materials for petroleum-based products, and to establish a framework for extending the results obtained to specific applications. If it can be shown that biolubricants are as effective as mineral oils currently being used, are cost competitive, and result in fewer environmental problems, it is probable that much of the data collected can be extrapolated to a variety of industrial applications. from