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7
Refining Processes for
Used Oil Recycling to
Base Oils or Fuels
7.1 INTRODUCTION
The objective of re-rening used lubricating oil is to provide a source of valuable
base oil that is suffering from decreased availability. In the re-rening process, used
lubricating (mainly automotive) oil undergoes an extensive series of processes to
remove contaminants, distill the used oil, and reform the oil molecules to produce
new base oils that have the same performance characteristics as virgin base oils
made from crude oil (Ott et al. 2010).
It is important to distinguish between re-rened base oils and recycled base oils
because recycled base oils ...