Evaluation of sustainability of lubricants by life cycle assessment and carbon footprint measurement

The global increasing awareness of sustainability has greatly affected the traditional lubricant market. The goals to reduce environmental pollution have increased the use of biolubricants rather petroleum based ones significantly due to several harmful impacts of the later including non-biodegradability, higher carbon emissions and bio-toxic wastes. In this review, a comparative analysis of biolubricants (soybean and rapeseed oils lubricants) with mineral and synthetic lubricants was performed with respect to their life cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprint (CFP) measurement. While bio-lubricants excel in biodegradability and global warming potential (GWP) reduction, they often have higher local impacts, especially in acidification potential (AP) and eutrophication potential (EP), due to the agricultural production phase. Although rapeseed lubricants imparted the lowest GWP, it showed a majority in the affected impact categories like acidification potential (AP), carcinogenics, respiratory effects (RE), eutrophication, ecotoxicity and photochemical smog (PS). Soybean oil based lubricants showed the lowest impact in most of the categories among the different types of lubricants, except for eutrophication potential and photochemical smog, for which mineral lubricants are the lowest. Considering the CFP, biobased lubricants are far more environmentally sound compared to mineral and synthetic lubricants. Their lower carbon emissions pave the way for a cleaner future, replacing the dependence on traditional petroleum-based lubricants.