Technology Highlights
Recycling or Re-Refining of Used Oil: Technology, Process & Economics
Waste oil, often called used lube oil – isn’t worthless. It still contains valuable base oil mixed with additives, water and other impurities. Through a process called re-refining (or regeneration), this waste oil can be purified to international standards and converted back into high-quality lubricating oil.
True used oil re-refining means recovering the base oil — separating it from contaminants through advanced processes such as distillation, hydrotreating (hydrogenation), adsorption, and bauxite polishing. This ensures the production of clean, reusable lube oil that reduces waste and supports sustainability.
Simply filtering waste oil to remove solids, or burning it as fuel, is not recycling. Only professional re-refining and regeneration restore used lubricants to a safe, reusable form.
Understanding True Oil Recycling:
Used lubricating oil contains many unwanted materials:
• Water, soot, solids and contaminants (about 5%) such as coolants
• Spent additives and fuel (20%)
• And most importantly, the original lubricating oil (75%)
Our expertise is in recovering and purifying the 75% of lube oil still present in used oil. We achieve this using advanced processes like distillation, hydrotreating, and adsorption. Each step designed to remove impurities and restore the oil to its original quality. This is what we called re-refining, and its products meet international standards for clean, reusable oil. With over a million tonnes of waste recycled globally, Sequoia’s process ensures real recovery of a valuable resource.
Key Features of Sequoia’s Advanced Technology for Re-refining Used Lube Oil & Waste Lubricants:
Sequoia delivers cutting-edge solutions for re-refining of used lubricating oil / waste lube oil /spent motor oil. Our process is a proprietary combination of distillation, adsorption, and hydrotreating technologies. The plant incorporating these technologies are efficient, reliable and built for long-term performance.
Why Our Process Delivers Real Value:
- Multi-Stage Refining: Each of the multiple steps of the process is carefully designed to achieve a specific purpose of recovery or purification.
- Corrosion-Free Evaporators: Specially engineered evaporators reduce solids deposits and corrosion, ensuring long-term durability, consistent product quality, and extended equipment life.
- Maintenance-Friendly Design and Low-Maintenance Engineering: With no moving parts and no crane requirements, our long-tube vertical evaporators simplify maintenance and reduce downtime.
- Superior Yields & Quality: We achieve maximum recovery of used lube oil, waste coolants, and spent glycol, with premium-grade intermediate and byproducts.
- Lowest Operating Costs/Cost Efficiency: For the same product quality, our technology offer optimum combination of capital and operating costs in the market.
- Global Footprint/Global Reach: Sequoia’s re-refining plants are successfully operational across 5 continents, for waste oil recycling, coolant regeneration, and wastewater processing.
Operational Economics of Re-Refining Technology:
Setting up and operating a used oil re-refining plant comes with certain essential cost and resource considerations. Based on what we have implemented:
- Utility Costs: Electricity, fuel, water, chemicals, and wastewater treatment by mechanical vapor compression typically cost between $15–30 per cubic meter of processed used oil—that’s around ~$0.06–0.13 per US gallon.
- Manpower Requirements: A fully integrated waste oil regeneration facility operates smoothly with a team of 10 to 15 people.
- Land Requirement: Depending on plant capacity, it requires 1 to 7 acres (roughly 4000 to 28000 square meters) to accommodate all core units—distillation, hydrotreating, adsorption, and support infrastructure.