Industry News
Gulf Oil And Piaggio Join Hands To Launch Lubricants For Commercial Vehicles
Gulf Oil Lubricants India recently inked a pact with Piaggio Vehicles to market co-branded lubricants for commercial vehicles. The new products have been co-developed for the entire range of commercial vehicles, including the ones conforming to the upcoming BS-VI emission norms.
"This (tie-up) helps us to further grow our business in OEM segment as well as expand our business in the three-wheeler category," Gulf Oil Lubricants MD Ravi Chawla said in a statement. Through this partnership, Piaggio customers will be able to avail top of the line products to enhance the performance of their vehicles and together, the companies will be able to strengthen the usage of these products with their reach and service initiatives, he added.
"Gulf Oil's technical expertise based on its world-class R&D setup and manufacturing facilities in India will certainly provide superior value to 27 lakh Piaggio customers," Piaggio Vehicles CEO & MD Diego Graffi said.
The Novel Method Turns Plastic Waste Into Lubricants
Scientists have developed a new method for upcycling single-use plastics into high-quality liquid products, such as motor oils, lubricants, detergents and cosmetics. The advance by researchers, including those from North-western University in the US, also improves on current recycling methods that result in cheap, low-quality plastic products.
The catalytic method, described in the journal ACS Central Science, serves a one-two punch by removing plastic pollution from the environment and contributing to a circular economy. The
researchers noted that each year, 380 million tonnes of plastic are created worldwide. As the plastics market continues to increase, many analysts predict production could quadruple by
2050, they said. More than 75 per cent of these plastic materials are discarded after one use. Many of them end up in our oceans and waterways, harming wildlife and spreading toxins.
While plastics can be melted and reprocessed, this type of recycling yields lower-value materials that are not as structurally strong as the original material. Examples include down-cycling plastic bottles into a moulded park bench, the researchers said. When left in the wild or in landfills, plastics do not degrade because they have very strong carbon-carbon bonds. Instead, they break up into smaller plastics, known as microplastics. The catalyst consists of platinum nanoparticles - just two nanometers in size - deposited onto perovskite nanocubes, which are about 50-60 nanometres in size. The team chose perovskite because it is stable under the high temperatures and pressures and exceptionally good
material for energy conversion. Under moderate pressure and temperature, the catalyst cleaved plastic's carbon-carbon bond to produce high-quality liquid hydrocarbons, the researchers said.
