Keep It Clean Dunwell's Technology Recycles Used Lubricants
Cleaning gooey used lubricant isn't the most glamorous of businesses to be in, but that doesn't mean it's not one that can't attract innovation.
When Hong Konger Daniel Cheng watched an Australian fuel-distillation plant go bankrupt in the late 1980s he got the urge to take over the failed business and see if he could turn it around.
Lacking any chemical engineering or oil-recycling background, he found himself poring over hundreds of drawings and boxes of documents, trying to find a way to make the plant profitable.
Part of the problem is that most fuel-recycling processes require a lot of energy, heating the oil waste at high temperatures so it breaks down, or cracks, into its constituent parts. This is expensive, and can be dangerous.
In his research Mr. Cheng noticed that waste water could be treated at much lower temperatures by filtering it through a vibrating membrane -- a thin sieve that shakes at a certain angle and certain rate to not only filter out solid particles but lift those bits off the filter itself, saving it from getting clogged and frequent replacement.
Mr. Cheng reasoned: "I've seen it used for water so why can't it work for oil?"
The inventors of the vibrating membrane took a lot of convincing -- filtering water, however thick and filthy, is a quite different proposition to filtering oil.
But after several years of tests and disappointments, Mr. Cheng proved his doubters wrong -- so much so they ended up being his partners.
Now his Vibrating Membrane used lubricant recycling technology, or VMAT, works at much lower temperatures than usual oil-distillation plants and carries a guarantee -- no replacement filters are required in the first year.
It's also much cheaper, he says, than the plants built in Europe and the U.S., and is perfectly suited for those countries like China, the Philippines and India, where a lot of old machinery -- from factories to cars -- are still in use, and whose owners cannot afford new oil.
Business for Dunwell Engineering Co., says Mr. Cheng, the managing director, is good for a plant that once went bust.
VMAT has now been running on a production scale for two years and will be used to handle Beijing's used lubricants for the 2008 Olympics.
Demand, meanwhile, seems bottomless. "Everything we produce we sell off," he says. "It's like a drop in the bucket." y
正昌科技：保持清洁
处理黏乎乎的废弃润滑油并不是什么美妙的事，但这并不意味着这里不能有创新。
八十年代末，香港人郑文聪(Daniel Cheng)接过了澳大利亚的一家破产的燃料处理厂，开始设法让它扭亏为盈。
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起初，缺乏化学工程和石油回收背景的郑文聪面对着数百张图片和成箱的文件，一时找不到让企业盈利的办法。
其中的一个问题是，燃料再加工普遍需要大量能源，要在极高的温度下对废弃燃料加热，使其裂解。这个过程往往花费不菲，而且危险性很高。
郑文聪在研究过程中发现，通过使用振动膜可以在较低的温度下过滤废水。
郑文聪说，“既然可以使用振动膜过滤废水，为什么不能用它过滤石油？”
振动膜的发明者费尽了口舌终于让人们相信它可以用于过滤废水，而对于废弃石油这种又厚又脏的物质，情况恐怕就大不一样了。
但经过多年测试、经历了几次失败后，郑文聪终于向怀疑论者证明他的明智──很多起初表示怀疑的人甚至成了他的合作伙伴。
现在，使用振动膜废弃润滑剂处理技术(VMAT)，他的工厂的处理温度比常见的石油蒸馏厂低得多，并且很有保证──第一年无需更换过滤器。
他说，采用这种技术的成本比欧美很多工厂低得多，特别适合像中国、菲律宾和印度这样老化设备仍在使用、企业主无力购买新设备的国家。
作为正昌科技有限公司(Dunwell Engineering Co.)的董事总经理，郑文聪表示，公司的业务特别适合那些曾经破产的企业。
VMAT形成生产规模已有两年，并即将被用于处理北京2008年奥运会期间的废弃润滑油。
此外，该技术的需求前景非常广阔。郑文聪说，“我们的产品经常被一抢而空，简直是供不应求。”
Jeremy Wagstaff
