Recycling of the used automotive lubricating oil by ionizing radiation process

The recycling process of the used mineral oils has been gaining a very important gap in the context of environmental protection. Among mineral oils from petroleum, the lubricating oils are not entirely consumed during their use; therefore, it is necessary to apply a treatment for recuperation seeking their reuse. Moreover, the environmental legislation of countries does not allow their discard in any type of soils, rivers, lakes, oceans or sewerage systems. The conventional treatment has shown certain difficulties in the recuperation process for used oils. The ionizing radiation process is renowned in the industrial effluents treatments due to its high efficiency in the degradation of organic compounds and in the removal of metals by the action of OH*, *H and e(aq) radicals. In this work, used automotive lubricating oil was treated by the ionizing radiation process for metal removal and degradation of organic compounds. The samples were irradiated with 100 and 200 kGy irradiation doses. Determination of the elements Mg, Al, P, S, Cl, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, Se, Mo, Nb, Cd, Sn, Ba, Bi and Pb, before and after the irradiation, was done by X-ray fluorescence technique and the organic profile was obtained by infrared spectroscopy. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.