There are many practical uses for used motor oil. A primary use is to re-refine it into a base stock for lubricating oil. This process is very similar to the refining of crude oil. The result is that the re-refined oil is of as high a quality as a virgin oil product.

A secondary use of the fuel oil (residue after re-refining) is to burn it for energy. Large industrial boilers can efficiently burn the fuel oil with minimum pollution. As a result some fuel oil is sent to power plants or cement kilns to be burned as fuel. On a smaller scale small quantities of fuel oil are burned in specially designed heaters to provide space heating for small businesses.

NFE's products mainly constitute Group I base oil products. These include base oils which are commonly identified as SN 150 and SN 500 which are readily traded in the world market. The Plant will also produce light aromatics and fuel oil which can also be readily sold in the market.

The Plant is designed to produce Group I base oil but at a later stage can also be upgraded (approximately $1m according to Thermopac) to produce Group II base oils by processing the distilled lube fractions through a process called hydrogenation. Base oil as explained earlier is processed and blended to produce different types of lubricants.

Furnace Oil

Fuel oil or heavy oil is a fraction obtained from WLO refining process, as a residue. Broadly speaking, fuel oil is any liquid fuel that is burned in a furnace or boiler for the generation of heat or used in an engine for the generation of power, except oils having a flash point less than 160°C and oils burned in cotton or wool-wick burners. Fuel oil is made of long hydrocarbon chains, particularly alkanes, cycloalkanes and aromatics. The term fuel oil is also used in a stricter sense to refer only to the heaviest commercial fuel that can be obtained from crude oil, i.e., heavier than Aromatics and naphtha.