How clean is new bottled oil?

[ledslinger]

I have seen residue in bottom of oil bottles and it usually called "additive dropout" What contaminants are in new oil, and how carefully are they filtered before bottling?

Are additives packages such as delivered by Lubrizol suspended in a liquid, or are some liquid and some powder?

What keeps solids suspended in oils and why do they precipitate out? Is it mainly particle size and having an affinity to bind electrochemically with the base oil molecules?

What additives are most suscepatable to returning to solid or dropping out? Are these solids abrasive?

Are useful additives removed by the filter if the additive molecules congregate and become too big?

 

[lipadj46]

Temperature, concentration and movement can effect how solutes dissolve or precipitate. So if a bottle of oil stays still long enough additive crystals could start to grow and propagate also if the temp drops then you can expect to have precipitation. Also if concentration increases (by evaporation for example) you can have precipitates form.

As far as the question whether or not the filter would catch them and remove them I would guess that once the oil gets hot enough even if solids did get trapped by the filter they would dissolve again in the heated oil flowing through the filter.

 

[Zaedock]

Personally, I don't think it's the additives "falling out". I think it's the dye used to give oil it's color. One way to find out would be to sample enough "fallout". I have noticed that after I pour lighter oils (like SuperTech or some Ashland products) I never seem to see any residue in the bottom.

I guess in the end, it doesn't matter. I've used 10 year old oil without an issue.

 

[daves66nova]

Originally Posted By: Zaedock
I think it's the dye used to give oil it's color.
Why even spend money on oil to give oil a color.Why not skip the coloring and pass the savings on to the consumer.

 

[SHAMUS]

It may possibly be particles of plastic from the manufacture of the bottle itself, not properly cleaned out before filling. A heck of a long time ago I worked at a Pepsi bottling plant. The empty cans and bottles, manufactured elsewhere and trucked in would be spot checked for "stuff" but that would be maybe 10 out of a thousand containers.

 

[mechtech2]

I'm not sure they dye oil anymore.
They used to.
This was because auto tranny fluid was red, anti freeze was green, and oil was amber.
This no longer applies.
I have friend who used to drive a semi. He would at times haul creosote to the oil refineries to use as a colorant/dye.
They don't do this anymore.