AXEL’s Group Technical Manager, Johan Leckner, presented a technical paper at the NLGI Annual Meeting in Toronto that highlights the importance of making sustainability studies on a system level - including both the lubricant and the component being lubricated. Failing to do so will result in an incorrect understanding of the sustainability impacts.

The paper includes the development of a grease for slow-moving and heavily loaded bevel gears that reduces gear losses by one third and that extends the gear life at least twofold. The new grease is then compared with the previously used grease in a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment which suggests that the newly developed grease has higher sustainability impacts than the former grease.

To contrast this, we also present a cradle-to-gate LCA for the gear/grease system where impacts are 50% lower over all impact factors for the newly developed grease, highlighting the importance of including the usage phase in any sustainability study.

We look forward to continuing with these studies and sharing our findings on sustainability with the community!