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Are all conventional motor oils (e.g. Quaker State, and etc.) made from recycled oil? I am informed this is the reason why we should use synthetic oil. Any thoughts?
By
Rolland, December 9, 2015
Are all conventional motor oils (e.g. Quaker State, and etc.) made from recycled oil? I am informed this is the reason why we should use synthetic oil. Any thoughts?
I'm no expert, but I think the opposite of what you've been told. That is, most conventional oils are not made from recycled oil. A couple of years ago Valvoline made a big push on their Nextgen recycled oil, which is 50% recycled. To me that implies that most conventional oil does not have much, if any recycled oil in it. What I've always heard is that oil never wears out, it just gets dirty and the additives wear out or are used up. There are supposed to be many advantages to synthetic oil, but I don't think conventional oil being mostly recycled is one of them. I would be suspicious of other things you've heard from the person who gave you that information.
Regardless if it is conventional or synthetic - all motor oil will have some percentage of it having recycled oil.
Poster Beel makes a great point - oil itself, the physical properties of the base oil, doesn't "wear out" - its the additive package, dispersants, detergents, and viscosity index improvers that are taking the brunt of the damage. Its these additives that give oil its unique color, not how much recycled oil content they have.
Used oil is processed via filtering, vacuum distillation, and wiped film evaporation to get it back to essentially a "new" lube base stock. This is introduced along with freshly processed base stock from crude oil - along with the manufacturer's proprietory mix of additives and other chemicals to be packaged as new oil. Remember - this lube base stock can be used in applications in addition to motor oil - example: automatic transmission fluid, hydraulic fluid, solvents, paints, etc. Refining used oil is actually pretty cost effective - some accounts peg it at about being 1/3 the cost compared to refining crude. Only thing that keeps it from being introduced in a higher content is availability of quality used motor oil and this stigma of using "used" oil when doing a fresh oil change.
Most motor oil out there probably has about 10%-15% recycled oil content - some use more, like Valvoline Nextgen with 50%. Majority of the used oil is consumed as fuel for power plants, industrial operations, and asphalt industries.
Caveat - It is true that some synthetic motor oils have very little to no used oil. But most of those synthetics have to be completely PAO (group IV oil) and ester (group V oil) based, ie. generally expensive. Even then, there is a fraction of the oil that has to use conventional base stock (can be from recycled content) to help keep certain additives in suspension.
My 1999 corolla now has 150K miles and I always use conventional motor oil. When changing oil, I always put in 4 quarts of oil and get close to 4 quarts of old oil when draining it on the next oil change.
Since the engine is not burning oil, do you recommend I switch to synthetic oil?
What is your oil change interval? Every 5000 miles, more, less?
No need to switch if it running well with the oil you are currently using. Synthetic works great only if you take advantage of its capabilities - like higher temperature stability, cold temperature flow, and higher solvency - otherwise, you won't see much difference between that and conventional motor oil, other than spending more money.
Given that you seem to have a 8th gen that isn't burning oil - I'd keep doing what you are doing. No reason to change at this point.
Also keep in mind that the quality of conventional oil now is much better than what is was 10 years ago. Current formulations of conventional oil could even give older formulations of synthetics a run for the money. Current synthetics have also changed significantly as well - some cases, not for the better, with some blenders using lower cost / lower quality base stocks.
I currently run synthetic for extending oil changes (backed with used oil analysis) on my cars - since I roll on the miles so quickly, I need the longer change intervals so I'm not changing the oil every other month for each car. My own 2002 Corolla is pushing 210K miles, gets an oil change every 10K-12K miles, like yours, doesn't consume any oil between changes.
