What is motor oil made from?

Question: Is synthetic motor oil made from crude oil?

MITASU OIL expert opinion: Most motor oils are made from a base stock and special additives. Let us consider the process of base stock production. Conventional oils are made from crude oil that is pumped from under the ground. Crude oil consists of a complex mixture of molecules that form chains and rings of various sizes and shapes. Long chains of carbon atoms produce a thick, slowly flowing viscous fluid, while shorter chains produce fluid that flows more freely.

In an oil refinery, crude oil initially undergoes a process of separation by vacuum distillation, based on viscosity characteristics. Long complex carbon chains are used to produce asphalt materials good for roofing tar and road works. The very short-chain and ring compounds of carbon are volatile and ideally suitable for production of gasoline and other petroleum products including motor oil.

Question: What technologies are used to derive high quality base stock from crude oil?

MITASU OIL expert opinion: Just below we will talk about several key technologies used to derive a high quality base stock. It is worth noting that all oil refining technologies are designed primarily to separate crude oil from all unwanted chemicals and particles and secondly to enhance some properties and special characteristics. While oil-refining technologies is an advanced science, small quantities of such pollutants as sulfur and reactive hydrocarbons, cannot be completely removed from crude oil products and may end up in a car's engine. The crude oil refining process removes such undesirable elements as wax, sulphur and nitrogen compounds. Unsaturated hydrocarbons get extracted or converted into more stable compounds.

Question: What are these technologies?

MITASU OIL expert opinion: To minimise the negative impact of crude oil use, the following processing technologies are implemented:

• Hydrotreating process replaces some of the unsaturated hydrocarbons with the addition of hydrogen under pressure and high temperatures. It also helps to remove a large portion of sulfur and some nitrogen compounds, improves colour, oxidation and thermal stability of the resulting oil product. Modern base stock production requires more than just hydrotreating process;
• Solvent Extraction process uses selective solvents to chemically separate natural saturated hydrocarbons from unsaturated. Derived base stocks differ as they have low viscosity index;
• Hydrocracking is an elaborate process, which involves rearranging complex hydrocarbons into, required more-stable combination of saturated molecules. The result of so-called severe hydrocracking is far superior to what can be achieved with hydrotreating and solvent extraction processes. The process called catalytic hydrocracking is used to produce base stocks with high viscosity index.
• Hydroisomerization is a wax conversion process when employed in conjunction with hydrocracking converts all unstable compounds of complex molecules into the most stable form possible. Motor oils derived from petroleum-based products with the help of these chemically significant technologies gives them status and qualities of fully synthetic oils.

Question: Does this imply that one product (crude oil) can provide a different number of base stocks varying, from mineral to fully synthetic oils?

MITASU OIL expert opinion: Indeed, use of modern technologies enable us to derive from petroleum products both, mineral and synthetic motor oils, with a variety of temperature and viscosity characteristics. Fully synthetic motor oils are made from high performance synthetic base stocks. Semi-synthetic oils are typically blends of some high performance base stocks with mineral oils. Mineral motor oils are based on conventional mineral base stock. However, nearly all modern motor oils regardless of their base stock type use special additive packages.

Question: What special additives are used to create motor oil formulas?

MITASU OIL expert opinion: Primarily motor oil needs to perform a variety of functions under a wide range of engine operating conditions. In order to achieve stability of any given characteristic motor oil is fortified with special additive packages. The total volume of additives in motor oil can reach up to 15-20%.

Use of highly purified base stocks, including Poly-Alpha-Olefin (PAO) along with technologically advanced additive package helps MITASU OIL CORPORATION, Japan, not only to produce engine oils adapted to the needs of all modern engines but also to meet the most stringent modern engine oil specifications (such as API SN and SM). Synthetic motor oils MITASU come with a popular, among conventional motor oils, range of viscosity characteristics, such as 0W-20, 5W-20, 5W-30 and with a wider line of such grades as 0W-30, 5W-50 and other.