The Performance Improvement Additive package

[MolaKule]

Re-Posted from another forum for general information since this topic arises frequently:

Quote:
At some point, they may as well just make their own add packs rather than buying commercial ones that can be blended with various basestocks to make a finished oil that will meet the desired KV grade as well as the desired cert/spec.



This is exactly what I used to do before Commercial PI packages became widespread. Buying separate chemical components for the PI package is often more costly than purchasing the Commercial PI package. The advantage for the formulator making his own PI package is that one has more control over the chemistry.

The advantage of purchasing Commercial PI packages is that the additive supplier (in most cases) has validated the package against OEM requirements through testing.

Here is how it works:

A Commercial PI manf. develops the PI formula from a mix of various chemical components. I.e., each individual chemical component in the mix is selected to accomplish a specific task.

[One component in the PI package might be a 2,5 dimercapto-1,3,4-thiadiazole chemistry for anti-corrosion and metal deactivation].

A commercial blender purchases the Commercial PI package and is given a "Blending" sheet or blending "card."

The blending sheet specifies 1) what base oils and VII's should be used and from what suppliers, 2) The mixing ratios for each base oil/VII/PI package combination.

When the Commercial PI package has been blended against this blending sheet, that Commercial PI manf. certifies that the resulting mix will meet, for example, Dexos1. Any deviation from this blending sheet means that the blender will have to have it re-certified, via re-testing, against OEM specifications.

The modification of a Commercial PI package is done for several reasons and is proprietary.

 

[SonofJoe]

Nowerdays, it's a brave company that sets off down the path of self-formulating and self-certifying their own engine oils.

The market has become so concentrated, and the buying power of the big boys grown so immense, that there's no way on this God's earth that any small independent company can individually procure ZDDP, Detergent, Ashless, VII polymer plus the other cats and dogs necessary to make a half decent oil, at prices that are going to be remotely competitive with an high volume, off-the-shelf system. And that's before you add on top, the cost and complexity of certifying the oil against formal specs (assuming that engine tests are physically available to run, which today a lot aren't).

Even large companies which have in-house access to much of the componentry that goes into oil (Chemtura/Lanxess comes to mind) have traditionally eschewed formulating their own systems and taken the more passive role of simply being component suppliers to The Big Four.

I think there's a lot wrong with the way oils have evolved to be 'approved'. The system concentrates far too much power in the hands of the OEMs, oil companies and AddCos to the detriment of the general motoring public. It also puts up massive hurdles to new players entering the market. Today, having a GF-5 approval has a lot in common with a medieval royal warrant in that it entitles you to sell a commodity that someone else, with an identical product (but no approval) cannot.

However with countries seemly falling over themselves to ban the sale of both gasoline & diesel cars at some point in the near future, I doubt things will change now. It may well be that GF-6 is the last 'big' high profile, market general oil spec change (that's assuming that it surfaces before we all die of boredom!).

 

[nascarnation]

Originally Posted By: SonofJoe
.
I think there's a lot wrong with the way oils have evolved to be 'approved'. The system concentrates far too much power in the hands of the OEMs, oil companies and AddCos to the detriment of the general motoring public.



So we're buying very high quality lubes for 22.95 USD for 5 quarts (Mobil 1 at my WM today).
What problem are you trying to solve? Is this a secret plot to make my truck wear out before 300,000 miles?

 

[fdcg27]

This thread has two of BITOG's heavy hitters and you.
Read some of their previous posts, particularly Soj's and you'll come to see what's wrong with ILSAC spec oils like the M1 you refer to.

 

[bigj_16]

"However with countries seemly falling over themselves to ban the sale of both gasoline & diesel cars at some point in the near future, I doubt things will change now. It may well be that GF-6 is the last 'big' high profile, market general oil spec change (that's assuming that it surfaces before we all die of boredom!)."
It will be kind of interesting to see how that whole 'electric car only" thing is going to work out.

 

[SilverFusion2010]

Gas and Diesel have life in them yet. Batteries can't match the energy density of liquid motor fuel.

 

[SR5]

Thank you Mola and Joe,

I was reading the Afton blending sheets, and like you said, use this blend of base oils then dose with this much add pack, and hey....your oil now carries this spec.

They also offered TBN booster packs, the above mix may yield a A3/B3 oil (TBN > 8) but add the booster pack then you have a A3/B4 oil with TBN > 10. Or something like that.

Are the only commercial booster packs available for TBN only? Or can you get other flavours of booster packs to help in other ways ? Maybe you want to claim your oil cleans a bit more or protects a bit more, to use in advertising and grab a bit of market share.

 

[SonofJoe]

Originally Posted By: SR5
Thank you Mola and Joe,

I was reading the Afton blending sheets, and like you said, use this blend of base oils then dose with this much add pack, and hey....your oil now carries this spec.

They also offered TBN booster packs, the above mix may yield a A3/B3 oil (TBN > 8) but add the booster pack then you have a A3/B4 oil with TBN > 10. Or something like that.

Are the only commercial booster packs available for TBN only? Or can you get other flavours of booster packs to help in other ways ? Maybe you want to claim your oil cleans a bit more or protects a bit more, to use in advertising and grab a bit of market share.



You can get other sorts of boosters; ZDDP boosters used to be common for the very low tier grades. Moly based boosters might be used to take you say from SJ to SL. Ashless boosters are rare because tend to be very viscous. Some boosters are even rarer because they pong to high Heaven!

The usual rule is if you're big enough, you can have anything you like booster-wise. However if you're a small company, then the options list is more restrictive.

Some of those systems you referred to are pretty neat, don't you think?

 

[Shannow]

Yep, quite clever.

It also buries the modern day myth that (say) SG has "more additives" than SL/SM.

 

[SonofJoe]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
Yep, quite clever.

It also buries the modern day myth that (say) SG has "more additives" than SL/SM.



Ahhh...yes...(cough)...errr, that statement may or may not be 100% accurate....

First off, I don't absolutely know what happened in the 'proper' API SG years from 1988 to 1993. I didn't get into engine oils until the dying days of API SJ. However I too heard from people who had fought in the trenches, that the contemporaneous treat rates needed for SG were high.

What I do know is that some of the key engine tests for 'proper' API SG (like the IIIE, VE and Cat 1H2) all died peacefully of old age around the turn of the millennium as API SG was declared obsolete. Of course this poses problems for formulators everywhere because unlike the US, Europe, Japan & Oz, not everywhere in the world wants the latest and greatest oil specs. Some places explicitly still wanted you to actvely compete for SG business.

Now once a product is declared obsolete, you can sort of do whatever you want.You could dissolve tomato ketchup into base oil & VII and claim it was API SG quality! However no oil company would ever accept this (and not just because the oil was red!). They would want to see some proof of performance demo testing which would give them a technical basis to say a system was 'roughly equivalent' to SG. You might reasonably do this by using newly introduced engine tests but trying to superimpose the test duration or limits of the older, 'dead' tests. By doing this you create a 'pseudo-SG' oil spec which is deemed to be an acceptable alternative to the real thing.

But of course, it isn't the real thing because to all intents and purposes, it doesn't matter to people today in the way it mattered in 1988. Certain unspoken rules apply. For example, you can't create an SG oil with an additive treat that is anything like as fat as today's 'in-vogue' oil; it has to be a lesser, cheaper-to-make oil. Also you're allowed a certain 'creative freedom' as to what base oils you might run the demo tests in, that you wouldn't haven't been allowed in 1988. The end result is that treat rates for your 'pseudo-SG' oil are very likely way lower that what was used when SG was 'live'.

 

[bigj_16]

What's really wierd is that the two intitial posts by MolaKule and SonofJoe are a showing a system that is a microcosm of the corporate world in general. This is the way it is across a broad spectrum. It has been said that baseball is analogous to life. Maybe oil, also?

 

[SR5]

Interesting, so classic SG and modern SG may not be the same animal.

In Oz we get Castrol Edgs 25W50 which is a premium mineral oil, must be close to a monograde, high zinc, Castrol's special Ti add, TBN of 8.3 and a massive HTHS of 6.1 cP. It's made for old school big bore push-rod V8 engines in racing and performance applications.

(Link Edge 25W50 PDF)

It's sold as a premium product, yet it's only rated SG, so if not rated SN then why not SL ? Is there a modern test it couldn't pass ? Would this be a Group I oil and would that be the problem (can you get Group II that thick)?

For this oil, I don't see it being lack of add pack or penny pinching.

 

[SonofJoe]

Originally Posted By: SR5
Interesting, so classic SG and modern SG may not be the same animal.

In Oz we get Castrol Edgs 25W50 which is a premium mineral oil, must be close to a monograde, high zinc, Castrol's special Ti add, TBN of 8.3 and a massive HTHS of 6.1 cP. It's made for old school big bore push-rod V8 engines in racing and performance applications.

(Link Edge 25W50 PDF)

It's sold as a premium product, yet it's only rated SG, so if not rated SN then why not SL ? Is there a modern test it couldn't pass ? Would this be a Group I oil and would that be the problem (can you get Group II that thick)?

For this oil, I don't see it being lack of add pack or penny pinching.



A couple of things...

First off, 25W50 oils are always a bit oddball. If I remember correctly, most of the official test read-across tables don't extend to cover this grade (they tend to stop at 20W50). So even if the base matrix program covered say SN, then unless you SPECIFICALLY ran a 25W50 ONLY program, your base program wouldn't automatically 'read' to cover 25W50. Which might be why it's got SG on the side of the can (just remember the tomato ketchup story!)

Another, more likely explanation is this oil contains a generic, low treat rate, 'pseudo-SG' DI pack. All of the big AddCo's have these readily available for sale. If that's the case, then there are a lot of modern industry standard tests I would expect the 25W50 not to pass. Now to be clear, that doesn't necessarily make it a bad oil. The oil has a very high HTHS which might make it better in an old V8 than a lot of oils with a long list of luggage labels. The trick with these oils is always to change them very regularly.

Regarding base oils, I'd guess it would be Group I 600SN possibly topped up with a bit of heavy Brightstock (a Group I) or a Group II 500N with a bit more Brightstock.

 

[SR5]

Thanks Joe, so if it's the second reason, low DI add pack, then what bit is low ?

It has high zinc (1000 to 1100 ppm I believe) and high enough TBN (> 8) so lots of detergents, maybe would it is the ashless dispersants. The polymer VII load should be low, but that is a good thing.

Maybe it's your fist reason, no read across rules, and no reason for the expensive one-off SN tests when that isn't the intended market. BTW it's a 25W50 ( not 60).

The old push-rod V8 guys are a special market, they know what they want and a ILSAC SN oil isn't on their radar, maybe one reason to keep it SG is to stop some fool putting it in his new Honda Civic hot hatch.

 

[SR5]

Moving back to DI add packs and booster packs, which are a very neat idea.

I keeping thinking, how would I do it if I made and sold oil and I didn't want to be a boutique brand. You can't develop and test products one-by-one as it's too expensive. Plus you need to provide products for all the major markets.

Here Valvoline make two full synthetic 5W30 oils (i assume Group III ).
- SynPower 5W30 DX for GM cars that is SN, GF-5 and Dexos1
- SynPower 5W30 FE for Fords cars that is SL (high ZDDP I assume) A5/B5 and WSS M2C 913C/D.
Both are thin resource conserving 5W30 oil. If I were to make these, could I simply develop one oil (that meets SN, Dexos1 and A5/B5) then add a booster shot of ZDDP to turn it into the Ford oil and also a SL oil ? That looks like the simplest and cheapest way to me.

Similarly we have two Castrol full synthetic (Grp IiI) 5W30 oils at the thick end of the grade.
- Edge 5W30 that is SL (due to high Zinc / Phos , stated by Castrol) A3/B4, MB 229.5, BMW LL-01
- Magnatec 5W30 that is SN and A3/B4 but no Euro OEMs.
Would these two be almost the same oil with just a ZDDP booster pack separating the two ?

Even is my "lesser" oil ( Magnatec in this case) passed a few Euro OEMs I might not put this on the bottle so as to keep the Euro car drivers focused on the more expensive Edge product.

My general feeling is that even with good name brand products, not every oil is hand crafted to be "just-so", but rather one oil is nudged a little this way or that way to make a few different oils for various market requirements.

 

[SonofJoe]

Originally Posted By: SR5
Moving back to DI add packs and booster packs, which are a very neat idea.

I keeping thinking, how would I do it if I made and sold oil and I didn't want to be a boutique brand. You can't develop and test products one-by-one as it's too expensive. Plus you need to provide products for all the major markets.

Here Valvoline make two full synthetic 5W30 oils (i assume Group III ).
- SynPower 5W30 DX for GM cars that is SN, GF-5 and Dexos1
- SynPower 5W30 FE for Fords cars that is SL (high ZDDP I assume) A5/B5 and WSS M2C 913C/D.
Both are thin resource conserving 5W30 oil. If I were to make these, could I simply develop one oil (that meets SN, Dexos1 and A5/B5) then add a booster shot of ZDDP to turn it into the Ford oil and also a SL oil ? That looks like the simplest and cheapest way to me.

Similarly we have two Castrol full synthetic (Grp IiI) 5W30 oils at the thick end of the grade.
- Edge 5W30 that is SL (due to high Zinc / Phos , stated by Castrol) A3/B4, MB 229.5, BMW LL-01
- Magnatec 5W30 that is SN and A3/B4 but no Euro OEMs.
Would these two be almost the same oil with just a ZDDP booster pack separating the two ?

Even is my "lesser" oil ( Magnatec in this case) passed a few Euro OEMs I might not put this on the bottle so as to keep the Euro car drivers focused on the more expensive Edge product.

My general feeling is that even with good name brand products, not every oil is hand crafted to be "just-so", but rather one oil is nudged a little this way or that way to make a few different oils for various market requirements.


By jove...he's thinking like a formulator! Yes, this is EXACTLY how you have to work the problem. What's your base model. How to you boost it to get it from A to B? Can you down treat to get from A to C. Can you extend a PCMO system into HDDO or Motorcycle?

Creating complex oil systems that truly hang together is an art form. It's definitely not a science because with proper science-y things, everything is usually known. In lubes, you never have anything like enough data to make any sort of informed judgement. The very best formulators have great instinctive feel for the slippery stuff which results in them being 'good guessers'. It also helps if you're very lucky.

Of course one of the great dilemmas that comes from this approach is that everything tends to be very 'samey' which is anathema to oil marketers who want everything to be different!

 

[SR5]

Originally Posted By: SonofJoe

Of course one of the great dilemmas that comes from this approach is that everything tends to be very 'samey' which is anathema to oil marketers who want everything to be different!


I certainly agree that many oils look "samey". Not only with the examples already given, but in many other ways too.

Recently I was looking at some VOAs of Castrol GTX and Castrol Edge in the standard ILSAC grades. I was struck by how similar the inorganic add packs looked in the oil analysis reports. To me it looked like you give the standard add pack to Group II and call it GTX or give the standard add pack to Group III and call it Edge. Of course you need to give the marketers something to work with, so you add a homeopathic dose of Titanium ( 7 ppm) so they can boldly claim its presence in a front label font far larger than the chemical concentration inside the bottle.

Not that I have a particular problem with Castrol, I think their Magnatec is one of the best bang for your buck oils around right now and that GTX add pack with 80 ppm Moly, 200 ppm Boron and 2300 ppm Ca is no slouch for a entry level oil.

 

[Shannow]

SR5,
here's a thread that I started a while back about the base oil interchange guidelines for the API

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/3660412/2

If you look at the tables with the eye that you've demonstrated in this thread, you could see how you could build a range, testing one viscosity in an expensive engine test, and apply it across other products in your catalogue...

 

[bigj_16]

Shannow,
What do think about this(from the Infineum article)
"The IQT tests highlighted that the propensity for auto-ignition increased from Group I to Group IV. We also noted that some Group V formulations are very resistant to auto-ignition (no auto-ignition promotion effect compared to pure fuel), which may be interesting for LSPI-resistant formulations."

 

[SonofJoe]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
SR5,
here's a thread that I started a while back about the base oil interchange guidelines for the API

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/3660412/2

If you look at the tables with the eye that you've demonstrated in this thread, you could see how you could build a range, testing one viscosity in an expensive engine test, and apply it across other products in your catalogue...




There's a similar series of tables for VII interchange. VII interchange programs tend to be rarer as the AddCo's tend to want to just formulate with their own in-house VII. However these days, the big boys have such enormous market clout, that if they want you to do one (say for reasons of security of supply), then you do it.

Then there are the Minor Modification rules which allow you mess around with the base DI pack itself under cover of Level 1 and Level 2 support. These are the rules that allow things like TBN boosts, ZDDP boosts, detergent interchanges, DI pack up-treats and new component addition.

I think the oil buying public would be genuinely surprised if they saw just how the specific can of oil they buy is technically supported.