Many of us are no longer willing to have our engine oil changed in an auto lube shop. With a little bit of knowledge about cars, we can do it by our own hands, saving us a considerable amount of money in the long run. It’s easy to get the old waste oil out and pour some new oil in, but what to do after that? The used oil is sticky and dirty. You’d probably want to get rid of it right away. So in this article, I will list some possible places for you to properly dispose of your waste oil and talk about how it is processed after that.
Why Do We Need to Properly Dispose of Motor Oil
Before we get into the question of how to properly dispose of waste engine oil, let’s figure out why we should do that.
1. Environment Protection
For the greater good, Proper disposal of waste motor oil helps protect our soil and water. Petroleum products flowing into soil, groundwater, rivers, oceans and lakes will cause severe pollution. Land becomes uncultivated and water becomes impure, killing the animals that live there. So just throwing waste oil away at will or pouring it into the sink can lead to serious consequences.
Another fact that you might be unaware of is that used oil can be recycled. So if you take your replaced engine oil to the right place, you also help reserve petroleum resources.
2. Legal Issues
Simply put, improper disposal of engine oil is legally prohibited and would lead to lawsuits when at a large amount. Nobody wants a fine or jail time, right?
3. Cashback
Yep, you can get some money by recycling the waste oil. Some engine oil recycling companies would pay you 30-50 cents for every gallon of waste oil you take to them, which makes the do-it-yourself oil change even more cost-effective.
3 Places to Get Rid of Your Used Engine Oil
The 3 places you can take your waste oil for recycling are community recycling programs, auto parts stores and auto service stations. To be noticed, you should call ahead to confirm that they do accept used engine oil and still have tank capacity. Then you are good to go.
Sounds like some easy money, right? Actually, there are other things you need to pay attention to – take an example, how to contain your waste oil. You won’t be thinking about just picking up a bottle at hand and use it to fill the oil, right? ‘Cause it’s not gonna work. Waste oil should be strictly contained and not to contaminated with any other fluids (including water), or it won’t be accepted for recycling. It would be great if you got the original container of this waste oil.
What Happens to Old Oil After It’s Disposed of?
After dropping your waste oil at a qualified facility, here comes the recycling process. The oil recycling center would gather those used motor oil and get them purified for reuse. Many might wonder how used oil is recycled. The answer is through an engine oil recycling plant. The process engine oil gets wasted is actually contamination. Solids, acid, water and gases are dissolved in the engine oil and cause it to turn black and invalid. So, many people in the industry call oil purification as “black oil recycling to base oil”.
A fully functional engine oil recycling machine should be able to degas, dehydrate, remove acid and solid particles. To achieve a whole purification, the waste oil need to go through 5 processes – catalytic process, heating, distillation (sometimes in a vacuum chamber), filtration and refinery.
Each process uses different technology to get rid of contaminants. After purification, the black oil should be turned to gold yellow and qualified to be used in certain scenarios. Some engine recycling plant adds an extra solvent extraction machine to further process the oil, and turn it into the exact same color as the water.
Is Recycled Engine Oil As Good As A New One?
The answer used to be no, but now we’re confident enough to say that oil purification technology can turn used black oil into products that match the quality of crude oil. The key property of engine oil is its viscosity. And if you run a viscosity test on the recycled oil, the result could be equal with crude oil.
So if you’re using recycled oil, don’t worry. You won’t need to perform an engine oil change more frequently or have your engine damaged (on the premise that you buy these oils from merchants that have passed the quality inspection).
YANGJIANG is a Chinese engine oil recycling plant manufacturer, we can produce machines capable of purifying used engine oil into high-quality base oil. For more details, visit the product page.
