Environmental Adaptation of Automotive Engine Oils and Their Future Technical Issues

摘要

Heightening of the awareness of environmental protection began in 1990 and has continued since. Energy saving, resource saving, prevention of global warming, and the like are familiar problems as has how to reduce the load on the environment. In this kind of situation decreasing the load on the environment includes engine oil for automobile use. Other contributions to (1) increased fuel economy (reduction of the quantity of CO{sub}2 discharge), (2) improvement of exhaust gas (reducing the amount of NO{sub}x/PM discharge: low phosphorous, low sulfur, low ash), (3) making it long drain (decrease waste oil) and the like are included, and these are reflected in engine oil standards. In this article we introduce the trends in engine oil standards with respect to the required performance in order to reduce these loads on the environment and the present state of research and development of engine oil, particularly, the state of the investigation concerning improving gas mileage, and we comment on future problems.