Oil recycler Glide has opened an re-refinery to recycle used motor oil, which has created jobs while earning export dollars.<\/p>\n
The Pukekohe-based facility turned used oil into new base oil, saving an estimated 100,000 tonnes of carbon a year, while nearly doubling its workforce to 38 employees from 20.<\/p>\n
Glide general manager John Knox said the re-refined base oil (RRBO) was ready to be blended into new lubricants and used again.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been handling waste oil on this site since 1984, and our team has spent years getting this plant from concept to fully operational,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Every oil change in New Zealand has ended the same way. The old oil gets collected, and then it gets burned. It’s a valuable resource, and we’ve been setting fire to it.”<\/p>\n
He said the process meant waste oil was kept in use rather than burned.<\/p>\n
Every every litre of RRBO reduced the need for new oil refined from crude.<\/p>\n
“We wanted to prove the plant and set a pathway towards optimisation,” Knox said, adding it was currently running at 70 percent capacity.<\/p>\n
“Production at the moment is maxed at around 24 million litres per annum of waste oil production … over the next year or two … ready to increase the plant capacity up to around 34 million litres per annum.”<\/p>\n
He said customers who contributed the waste oil benefited through reduced emissions, while Glide benefited by the production of a higher value by-product of waste oil.<\/p>\n
“The base oil is a much higher value product than the product we were selling, which was the furnace oil.<\/p>\n
“The product value difference is probably in the order of five to 10 times. So, it’s a much more valuable product.”<\/p>\n
Glide executive director Gavin Thomas said the facility gave New Zealand a significant new tool for cutting emissions.<\/p>\n
“Taking potentially 100,000 tonnes of carbon out of the picture each year is a real, measurable result, and it happens simply by recycling something we were already collecting,” Thomas said.<\/p>\n
“For workshops, dealerships and fleet operators, it’s a straightforward way to know their waste oil is being recycled, not burned. That matters to their customers, and it matters to their own emissions reporting.”<\/p>\n
How re-refining works<\/p>\n
The plant refining process runs in four main stages:<\/p>\n
Collection and testing: used oil is collected from Glide customers nationwide and tested on arrival to check its quality and screen out contaminants.Pre-treatment: water, fuel residues and solids are removed from the oil.Vacuum distillation: the oil is heated under vacuum to separate the valuable base oil from heavier residues, which are recovered for use as light cut, middle distillate and asphalt extender.Finishing: the base oil is treated to remove remaining impurities producing a clear, high-quality re-refined base oil ready to be blended into new lubricants.<\/p>\n
About 70 percent of the waste oil was base oil. The remaining 30 percent consisted mainly of water, light cut (used to reduce friction), middle distillate and asphalt extender, which can also be recovered and repurposed so that nearly 100 percent of waste oil was reused.<\/p>\n
Glide said RRBO does not wear out and can be re-refined many times over.<\/p>\n
“All we do is produce the base oil component. We sell the base oil component through the commodity market, just like you do with crude oil,” Knox said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oil recycler Glide has opened an re-refinery to recycle used motor oil, which has created jobs while earning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-636447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}