Lube oils are also a matter of concern to decrease the consumption of petroleum
 

Well, we can get biodiesel, SVO, WVO, biomethane, ethanol, whatever, but the engines won't run without lube oil. We might remember that the original Castrol oils had Castor oil in the formula, altough blended with mineral oil, and that palm oil has the same lube properties as synthetic oils. Currently I only see some support to the usage of vegetable-based lube oils among the 2-stroke enthusiasts, altough it can also work for 4-stroke engines in matter of decreasing the accomodated reliance on petroleum.

The nice thing about lube oil is it's recycleable.

The problem with "recycling" oil is that for the most part, it is actually downcycled. A majority of it is burned (albeit for electricity production), but it is not "recycled" into useable lube oil. It is of course better to downcycle then for people to dump hundreds of millions of gallons of oil into the ground, bay, etc.

Earth911

This is a pretty interesting article. Can Oil be Recycled

If we are burning recovered oil, then burning something like palm would be better, because that would be similar to burning biodiesel (zero carbon footprint)

The nice thing about lube oil is it is recycleable.

there are a few companies out there making lube oils out of animal fats and other materials. i believe one of those companies is g-oil. ive used their motor oils in the past. had blackstone labs do an oil analysis and it faired as well as mobil 1 and valvoline full synthetic.
i dont think all oil is downcycled...valvoline is working on popularizing its 50% recycled pretty heavily right now. im sure other companies will follow.

I agree it is nice to have a recyclable resource, but are we actually recycling it? According to Earth 911, we are burning a "large portion" of used oil. I haven't found anything yet on what that number actually is, but that's not really recycling.

EDIT: According to Scientfic American, only 10% of used oil is recycled. The rest or majority of the rest is burned for power generation. 10% of 1.3 BILLION (with a 'B') gallons.

To me recycling is re-refining it to use again and again in a motor (or similar).

Also, isn't burning oil more pollutive than gas or diesel? Or is that only if the engine isn't designed to burn oil?

I still think "growing" our lube oil (and electricity oil) is better than using crude.

Thanks kir_kenix, I'll have to look into "alternative" oils. This seems to be on par with "orange" tires that is a popular thread right now. I wonder if I can get my car to smell like an orange tree or tropical oasis with these alternative products! :D

I think I found the Valvoline recycled stuff kir_kenix was talking about.
Valvoline Nextgen

There are also so called level 5 synthetics on the lube front that are "lifetime" oils. Only one company has marketed it as far as I can tell, just need to change filter, add top oil and additives and your good for around 100,000 miles, not sure thats a lifetime though.

I think 100,000 miles is the industry standard 'lifetime'. It would be interesting not to have to service a car for 100,000 miles (solve the filtration and top up at shorter service intervals problems). Most other things - like timing belts, coolant, brake fluid - could also be made to go that distance, if they don't already, leaving just tire pressures, wiper rubbers and not much else that have to be regularly serviced.

There are a few different pathways to lubricating oils from renewable sources. One is the ester type oils based on biologically derived fatty acids (like most biodiesel but with alcohols other than methanol). Without knowing the full chemistry, I think these oils are already used in the machinery used to manufacture food and pharmaceuticals because they are non-toxic.

Another way is to synthesise the oils from CO and H derived from whatever feedstock is convenient, similar to synthetic gas substitutes or indeed current synthetic oils (Fischer-Tropsch sp? type synthesis).

It can be done, at least technically. The issue is likely to be cost.

Just because the vast majority of lube oil is reused as heating oil doesn't take away from its recyclability. That's just a problem of economics- where I work we generally pay someone to take the used oil away once in the summer, but the rest of the year it's free heat. We're going to be burning something for heat, and the used oil just shows up here without us doing anything. It wouldn't make sense for us to buy heating fuel.

I'd believe lube oil pollutes more than gas or diesel- it's got more energy too. I know a guy with an old diesel generator, and it's got a lot more oomph when he adds waste oil to the diesel.

It's currently done commercially in South Africa by Sasol, and was done in Nazi Germany during WW2, using coal as feedstock. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, wood chips were used as the feedstock for synthetic gasoline.