Environment

Southern Oil Refineries (SOR) has been granted an Environment Protection Licence No. 11408 - 16/07/04 to operate the Bomen Refinery under the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (the PEO Act).

The broad objectives of this NSW legislation (PEO Act 1997) are:

• To protect, restore and enhance the quality of the environment in New South Wales, having regard to the need to maintain ecologically sustainable development.
• To provide increased opportunities for public involvement and participation in environment protection.
• To ensure that the community has access to relevant and meaningful information about pollution.
• To reduce risks to human health and prevent the degradation of the environment
• The monitoring and reporting of environmental quality on a regular basis,
• To rationalise, simplify and strengthen the regulatory framework for environment protection.
• To improve the efficiency of administration of the environment protection legislation.

As an environmental business Southern Oil Refineries is careful to minimise the impact of its operations on the local environment by ensuring consistent compliance with its license requirements.

Eco-efficiency

Used oil lost to water systems or landfill has the potential to pollute whilst not being available to future generations as a lube oil resource. Re-refining used oil is an environmentally sustainable way of managing:

• Used oil use,
• Used oil recovery, and
• Its re-use.

When consumed for energy only by using as a fuel, the unique lubricating properties are lost in return for a one off, lower resource value application.

Once the original lubes have been extracted and refined, ecological and sustainable development promotes their conservation for their "Highest Net Resource Value". Instead of used oil being burned in low temperature furnaces, re-refining used oil back to "as good or better than virgin oil" conserves a valuable non-renewable resource. Re-refining is also energy efficient, as less energy is required to produce a litre of re-refined base stock than to produce the same quantity from crude oil.

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Health and Safety Issues

Compared to new motor oil, used motor oil typically has a much higher concentration of carcinogenic compounds such as Poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) that are formed as by-products of inefficient combustion reactions. Certain metals also of concern include:

• Cadmium,
• Chromium and
• Arsenic.

In addition of there is a risk of poly-chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) finding their way into used oil collection programs and therefore part of SOR's quality regime is to protect against this intrusion.

The SOR process is effective in reducing these harmful contaminants to the same, almost non-detectable levels as for virgin base oils enabling SOR re-refined oil to be sold as equivalent to virgin base oil.

Used Oil Facts

The collection of used oil serves two important functions:

• Collecting used oil removes used, spent or unwanted materials as a service to the generator and eliminates the chance of environmental damage.
• The collection process is also the first step in the chain of quality assurance measures eventually leading to production of the "as good as or better than virgin" lube oil products available from SOR.
  

	Composition of Used Oil
	Base Oil The main component of Lube Oil. It does not 'wear out', but simply becomes contaminated Depleted Additives The additives in the lube oil lose their performance characteristics Contaminants Water Fuel burns to CO2 and H2O. When an engine is cold the water created can pass through to the lube oil Fuel Unburnt petrol / diesel passes through to the lube oil during engine start-ups Carbon Forms as a result of incomplete combustion when an engine is warming up and passes through to the lube oil Dust Small particles pass into the engine oil through the air breather Metals Due to normal engine wear Oxidation Products Additive chemicals at elevated temperatures can oxidise forming corrosive acids

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