Abstract:
This reseach was aimed to study situation and problems of used lubricating oil in Thailand, as well as to assess an appropriate treatment technology, As the demand for lubricating oil is increasing every year, the amounts of used lubricating oil, consequently, is rising. This increase has adverse effects on environmental quality and needs proper management. The data were collected by means of questionaire, plant visit, collecting of secondary data as well as reviewing of related treatment technologies. Then, appropriate treatment technologies were evaluatedThe results show that 50 percentage of lubricating oil used was turned into waste, i.e. used lubrication oil. The amounts of used lubricating oil was increased from 212.5 million litres in year 1993 to 220, 243 and 252 million litres in year 1994-1996, respectively. It was found that collection system as well as treatment technologies currently used are not technical viable. Also, illigal dumping was found. Only used lubricating oil generated from big sources could be sold to small entrepreneurs at price of 1-5 Baht/litre. It was then sold to re-refinary plants or other factories using fuel oil. At present acid/clay techniques is used to treat used lubricating oil in these re-refinary plants. It produces greate amounts of hazardous waste which was currently dumped in their backyard. The re-refined products, whose quality is normally poor, were also found to be mis-used. On the other hand, there is no control mearure for the use of used lubricating oil as fuel oil regarding environmental impact.For industrial section, data from questionaire demonstate that in this section 78 percentage of the factories studied had collection system for used lubricating oil, most of which commingle collected. Only 30.5 percentage collected with oil type. When classified according to the size of the factories, the percentage collected in big, medium and small-sized factories were 90, 85 and 54 percentage, respectively. Concerning the utilisation of the used lubricating oil collected, in over all picture, it can be sold off, used as fuel , or use for other proposes, whose of which percentages distribution of 54.9, 26.8 and 18.3, respectively. When size of factories is considered, those percentages distribution were 77.8, 22.0 and 0 , respectively, for big-size factories; 46.3, 34.2 and 19.5 percentage, respectively, for medium size factories, and 35.7, 14.3 and 50 percentage, respectively, for those with small sizes.From this study it is suggested that there are 2 suitable ways to reuse the used lubricating oil. Firstly, re-refinary is recommended as it causes less environmental impact as well as reserves natural resources. However, the re-refinary methods should be those with vaccum process. In case of using acid/clay method with this, the amounts of clay should be minimised. The second method recomended is to use it as fuel in Cement kiln.