synthetic oil?

Is synthetic motor oil a petroleum based product with fantastic additives or a concoction developed in a chemical lab with no petrochemicals ? Ellis

Inquiring minds want to know.

can be either...


some is derived from natrual gas, some from dino based oil,
some from ester bases... so group 3, 4 and 5 based oils are considered ""synthetic" based oils. Group 4 and 5 have a slight performance win over group 3 oils, but these are are outside the normal range needed in most applications. If you run equipment below -30 degrees, you need the better rated oils...

Early on most of these were group 5 oils, but as group 3 oil production came online much cheaper and with over 90% overall match in performance, and for most applications 100% of performance requirements, you see either group 3 bases, or mixes of group 3 and 5 bases, and group 5 for the extreme end.

The US market has enjoyed a strong showing of all three blends for many years, so this middle to high end oil has been around and well used for years now. Where the euro markets had either lower end oils or group 5 high end oils only...... untill recently where the higher end BLENDS are now starting to show up giving them a ""middle to high" end oils at much better prices. Chevron and others have licensed out the hydro-fracking technologies required to produce these oils in high quantities.(old history now)

rotella t4, t5, t6 are an examples of the blending of the groups to give a high performance oil,, moving to an oil that will perform better in sub zero extremes. And yes these oils do perform better in higher heat, but heat that high would be out of the norms for modern engines. Siberia has vehicles running around at -88...


Modern engines will keep the oil temp within 15 degrees of the water temp, so oil should never exceed 250 degrees even in towing modes. Lesser oils will start to oxidize at 260, where syn oils could be run over 300 degrees. But as 245 is about as hot as your oil will ever get and oil coolers control it even more. So more and more its the cold end of the spectrum that needs to be addressed.

Ive work for an oil company for several decades. There are MANY complications that involve fitting into two classifications: So i'll try to make it simple; I'll preface with "base oil" is the lighter viscosity component that is usually "dinosaur/plant based" petroleum. Commonly called hydrocarbons. Some modified petroleum components are sometimes used and classify as synthetic.

1. there are synthetic blends which require a minimum 4% man made "base oil" to qualify for syn blend.
2. The are full synthetic blends that have 100% man made base oil to qualify for full syn.

The additives can either be man made or another derivitive of petroleum.
Hope I didn't rail on too much.
Thanks
Jim

In addition to the good comments posted here, I'll add that "regular" oil is a mixture of many different hydrocarbon compounds. Synthetics are much more uniform in their chemical makeup, making it easier to design a synthetic oil to perform a specific job, such as low temperature environments, etc.

As mentioned synthetic engine oil can be made from petroleum base stock or man- made synthetic base stock.

basically synthetic oils are made from the raw ingredients that make up motor oil. Instead of refining cruel oil into motor oil the systemics take the base chemicals and create an oil (or other lubricant).

THAT is the key difference. Now where they get the base chemical ingredients varies. Those base chemicals can be derived from crude oil stocks or natural gas or??..

The benefits of synthetics, especially the group 4 and up as noted by others is they can use the best base ingredients to make the best oils. Using the "pure" or "purer" base chemicals they avoid all the undesirable ingredients like the paraffin that solidify in colder temperatures. => maintaining the true viscosity of the oil.

also the better synthetics tend to have better additive packages as well which help them handle the contaminates that naturally occur in engines that break down motor oils.

email me if you have more questions
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Synthetic is best suited for extreme heat , extreme cold and extreme pressure .

Once I found out that the military jets I flew were serviced with Mil-L 23699, pure synthetic oil I never bought much oil. The shop chief said they spilled more than a car uses.

I am really glad that this subject came up, but I still don't know what synthetic oil is made of.

There are NO oils in the US which are true synthetics. A synthetic oil is made from a group of polymers, and esters, paraffins, and a few other special concoctions that modern engines require. There was a HUGE lawsuit between Castrol and Mobil when one of them started selling hydrocracked dino oil with additive package as 'full synthetic'. The court eventually ruled that even though it came out of the ground as crude oil, was refined, then refined again for the base stock, they were allowed to market it as 'full synthetic'.

Having said that, the rules in the EU are entirely different. 'Full synthetic' oil in the EU cannot be made from crude oil that was pumped out of the ground, and hydrocracked and then refined again. 'Full synthetic' in the EU comes from a lab where the constituent elements are blended, and then go through fractional distillation to the final product.

I say again - there are NO true full synthetic oils in the US for the automotive market. There are some special lubricants that are used in industry, and scientific machines which do require full synthetic oil, but it is not marketed for SAE API auto engines, and it is very, very expensive($25-300 per qt).

One could go to the EU, buy some cases of full synthetic oil and then try to ship it to the US. But - guess what!? It's against the law to import synthetic motor oil from the EU without a special license. I know, because I tried to order a few cases for an exotic car I own, and was warned by the English distributor that they were not allowed to ship to any US destination. Sad.

A long time ago a chemical engineer told me this was the simple answer. They
take petroleum or natural gas and rip it apart right down to the molecules.
Then they start screwing it back together and add or subtract what is needed to
perform certain ways. Totally custom oil. In other words, it would be very
difficult to refine the product but you can screw the little parts together
much easier. All of my stuff gets 5-20 synthetic blend and everything is very
happy. That's all I've got.

Me either.

The best way I know to think of it. It was a blend of chemicals made by the Germans in WWII. They were losing the
oil fields to allied bombing. So they had to come up with a way to keep. The military going. They used it to make
fake oil,grease,fuel and other needed items.

One of the few good things that came out of that war.

Some synthetics use plant oils as a base to begin the process, or are added to the mix. In the automatic transmission industry, and possibly others, the use of oil from jojoba beans is one of the items used in the mix.

It mostly natural gas, think how clean gas is and what crude oil looks like. I made an oil consumption rig at work to use on 95 liters for testing and I got to asking the engineer a lot about oils.

PAO...PolyAlphaOlefin.....also used as a very efficient dielectric fluid in high voltage equipment......I think I remembered the spelling correctly.