Evaluation of the techno-economic and environmental performance of all-component recycling process for waste lubricating oil

Conventional recycling processes cannot recycle the residual lubricating base oil contained in waste lubricating oil. Thus, an all-component recycling process was proposed to recover both the distillate and residual lubricating base oil. Here, we evaluate the techno-economic and environmental performance of this process. Several eco-nomic factors were considered and a sensitivity analysis of net incomes was conducted, and 13 environmental impact categories were included in a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the environmental performance. The effects of varying the transportation distance and fuel on the environmental impacts were discussed. The all-component process had a considerable economic benefit and strength anti-risk capability of the project. The total capital and production costs of the all-component process for 0.1 million ton/yr waste lubricating oil was around 50.8 MUSD and 651.9 USD per ton, respectively. The market price of base oil was the most important factor in the net in-come. The LCA results indicated that the all-component recycling process could be an advanced environmentally friendly recovery process. The global warming potential and primary energy demand were the most important environmental impacts with values of 425.6 kg-eq. CO2/ton waste lubricating oil and 2911.8 MJ, respectively. The variation of transportation distance resulted in slight changes in all environmental impact categories except water use.