ndustrial gear oils have always been a position of interest for ALCO. The company’s focus on producing in line with international trends has encouraged its engineers to develop specialty industrial lubricants as opposed to automotive lubricants. One of the most commercially successful industrial lubricants manufactured by ALCO’s Aminol Lubricant Manufacturing Facility are industrial gear oils.
In 2019, the companies engineers began tests to treat industrial gear oils with more specialised additives to test performance. Due to a higher volume of sythetic base oil availability, engineers also started using synthetic bases and testing how much of a performance benefit the new formulation offers. Unfortunately, the product was seen as commercially unviable as a regular industrial gear oil, due to its inability to compete with generic brands on the market.
As the company began to use more PAO, and procurement volumes were increased, the material became cheaper. The benefit offered by economies-of-scale, coupled with the new idea to develop lubricants for wind turbines, presented a new opportunity to revive the project.
Aminol engineers and comercially-oriented members of the team, as well as all levels of management, are interested in developing specialty industrial fluids for use in the most modern technologies.
The nature of maintenance fluids used for wind turbines, especially offshore wind turbines, fitted perfectly with the goal of engineers to develop a long life, enriched gear oil. Wind turbines are not serviced often due to the relatively more challenging and costly method of servicing, through pumping. Offshore wind turbines are also more prone to oxidation due to their location in high wind and high moisture areas.