Greener lubricants to decarbonise heavy industry
Spotted: As renewable energy infrastructure expands, so do the maintenance requirements. And, similarly, the growth of e-commerce requires ever-faster production and distribution networks. Facilitating that growth are new machines, including robots, capable of technical tasks older ones are not. As materials technology develops, heavy machinery is increasingly smart, connected, and made from more environmentally healthy components.
A crucial aspect of many industrial machines is the lubricant that allows the pieces to move at incredibly high speeds and temperatures. When contaminants get in the oil, machines can fail, jeopardising worker safety and causing production costs to skyrocket. Dutch industrial lubricant manufacturer Fluitec provides new-generation lubricants and management systems. The company’s lubricants are designed to withstand the new workloads of cutting-edge machinery, and the management systems provide laboratory-level quality analysis on the plant floor as well as in the field.
Fluitec’s Fill4Life programme is a circular method of improving the life span of a lubricant while reducing a company’s carbon emissions. Rather than the linear model of adding new oil to a machine and then disposing of the old, Fill4Life uses Fluitec’s turbine oil and healthier, greener additives to significantly prolong the life of a machine and the lubricant that allows it to run. Fill4Life is customisable and can reduce every machine’s CO2 footprint by 85 per cent and save a company at least 50 per cent of its previous expenditure on oils.
Fluitec also provides the Ruler V Antioxidant Monitoring solution to analyse and predict the longevity of the lubricants currently in a machine. The monitor works in full sunlight and includes dictation capability and a camera for fast, accurate reports from the field. And with a small Membrane Patch Colorimetry (MPC) test, Fluitec provides a visual inspection of a lubricant’s health in under two seconds. The system stores the data for trend analysis and pre-emptive maintenance to help reduce machine failure.
Fluitec is a carbon-negative company and claims to be the only one of its kind to attain B Corp certification.
From electricity-powered paving vehicles to industrial waste materials replacing cement, innovations in Springwise’s library are working to help decarbonise heavy industry as quickly as possible.
Written By: Keely Khoury
The first Long Beach library was founded in 1896 in a room adjoining the City Council office. Three years later the library moved into City Hall next to Pacific Park, and in 1909, a new Carnegie library opened near the location of the present Main Library. In 1915 Pacific Park was renamed Lincoln Park.
With its name that pays homage to the famed athlete and Long Beach native, the Billie Jean King Main Library is adjacent to Lincoln Park, a local landmark. The library was imagined as a pavilion within the new park, welcoming people inside from all parts of the city. It was made to serve as a traditional library and a modern, technology-focused hub for the community. SOM outlines that while there was a tight budget, the open interiors incorporate multi-use, flexible spaces that allow visitors of all ages to participate in solo and collaborative activities.
The library offers a rich program of activities, in which reading and browsing book stacks are only a part of the experience. For instance, the main level features sizeable open spaces dedicated to children’s literature and activities organized by age. Each space is designed for social interaction, play and learning, while computers, book collections and quiet reading areas are available for use on the second level.
The building is one of the few in Southern California that utilizes a heavy timber structural system, composed of renewable timber reinforced with steel and concrete where needed. Each material is employed in a hybrid system to optimize its respective properties. The library’s superstructure consists of glue-laminated timber girders and joists with plywood decking, highlighting the warmth and character of the building.
By using timber, a lightweight material, the library could be built atop the existing structure of an underground concrete parking garage. Saving most of the extant concrete structure also allowed the design team to significantly cut down on material waste; the design reduces embodied carbon by 61 percent, compared with erecting a new parking garage and a conventional concrete building. “Our goal was to leverage the power of clear ideas, natural materials, and Southern California sunlight to create a bright, beautiful, and beloved new place for the people of Long Beach” noted Paul Danna, Design Partner.
After its completion, the Billie Jean King Main Library received LEED Platinum certification. The Library also won the Gold Award for the Best Social Infrastructure Project in 2016 and the Excellent Structural Engineering Excellence Award from the Southern California Structural Engineers Association in 2020.