Life cycle used lubricating Oil management options

Used lubricating oil (ULO) is one of the anthropogenic pollutants, contains toxic substances, therefore its handling is very difficult. This hazardous oil needs proper abatement technologies extensively depend not only on the suitability of the technology but from the environment point of view. In this work, base on the life cycle, six management options were evaluated for ULO for their environmental impact point of view. Two of them based on the recycling treatment of ULO, i.e. acid clay and solvent extraction processes for the recovery of main product, the recycled used oil. The other four options based on the energy to generate from ULO are smaller boiler, vaporizing boiler, atomizing burner boiler and cement kiln, where as the emissions were characterized into four environmental impact categories: acidification potential, global warming potential, eutrophication potential and heavy metals. The high environmental load believe to be produced by acid clay treatment in terms of acidification where as the lowest environmental impact created in terms of global warming potential and heavy metals is the cement kiln because of the high temperature in cement kiln, that could has been rightly allowed for the complete combustion of organic compounds in ULO, and other heavy metal contaminants during the cement reaction captured in mortar.