Novitas Chem Solutions, LLC
Introducing Novitas’s Specialty Additives (SA): FM/AW/EP Additives

By Liwen Wei, Novitas Chem Solutions, LLC | TLT CMF Plus November 2015

NOVITAS CHEM SOLUTIONS, LLC was founded in 2006 to provide consulting services with an emphasis on innovation and business solutions for the lubricant industry. We have since forged trusting and long-term partnerships with clients and customers that enable Novitas to offer top notch specialty products emphasizing Innovation, Quality, and Value Creation.

Today, Novitas will present three main product categories:

1) Friction Modifier (FM),
2) Anti-wear (AW) additive, and
3) Extreme pressure (EP) additive.

These additives offer innovative solutions for today’s automotive, industrial and grease applications. Reducing friction is the key to improving energy efficiency, minimizing wear and is crucial to machinery reliability. Boosting load carrying without resorting to chlorinated paraffin or sulfurs is important for environment/health benefits. These three subjects are top priorities for many lubricant formulators.

Molybdenum type additive is known in industry as a Friction Modifier (see Figure 1) through its self-decomposition and interactions with surrounding additives such as ZNDTP or other sulfur containing additives. Traditional type Mo additives with Mo₂S_xO_y core are widely used in automotive, industrial, and grease applications. How - ever, it has been reported that these Molybdenum additives lose their friction reducing effects over time due to the instability of the MoS₂ film generated in-situ. Today Novitas offers traditional types (e.g. FM-5104 and 5208) as well a new class of Molybdenum additives with a stable Mo₂S₄ core (for instance, FM-5308, FM-5413).


Figure 1. Molybdenum Type FM Chemistry

Many anti-wear (AW) and extreme pressure (EP) additives are based on phosphorus/sulfur/heterocycles components (see Figure 2). Novitas offers a wide range of phosphorus based AW additives for instance, TPPT (AW-3001), triaryl phosphates (AW-3305) as well as amine phosphates (AW-3160) and thiophosphates (AW-3211). Through 4-ball testing (ASTM D4172) we compared these phosphorus based additives including AW-3211, a patent pending additive, with the industry leading/competitive AW additive in PAO 40 and in ISO 68 polyol ester.


Figure 2. AW/EP Chemistry

In PAO40 study (see Table 1) we confirm that Novitas’ patent pending thiophosphate additives (AW-3211) is by far the most effective AW additive from 0.05wt% to 0.5wt%, outperforming AW- 3180 and AW-3160 which are popular in many industrial lubricants. A competitive thiophosphate additive that is known to be a FZG booster, was effective at low dosage, however, it became a “wear” additive when dosage goes beyond 0.25wt%. This competitive additive has a strong and offensive odor, indicative of possible more corrosive sulfur present. When we change the base oil to ISO 68 POE (see Table 2), AW-3211 remains the best performing AW additive (as is AP-6100 that contains AW-3211). Interestingly however, we noticed the fluids additized with AW-3211 after testing did not show any color changes while other phosphorus based additives darkened during testing. Color change of test fluids is attributed to the frictional heat generated during the 4-ball runs. No color change suggests a minimum friction heat generated.





No color change noted in 4-ball testing (see Table 2), we believe, is the result of unique film forming and friction reducing capability of this additive as may be shown by the Stribeck curve (see Figure 3). Too much of the film forming capability gives more wear, as in the case of the competitive products (see Table 1). Not enough film forming capability, AW becomes less effective. The following AW trend may thus be proposed:

AW-3211 > AW-3180 > AW-3160 > AW-3305



EP Additives such as chlorinated paraffins and sulfurs are widely used in industry, however, have long been scrutinized due to their environment/ health concerns. As alternatives to these EP additives, Novitas offers a native lignin based EP additive for environmentally friendly grease applications: EP-2000 (previously named AEP, see Figure 4) and a highly effective phosphate based EP additive EP-2301E (see Figure 5) that was found to be effective in replacing chlorinated paraffin at a reduced dosage. For instance 5wt% EP-2301E gives the same 4-ball weld load as that of 25wt% chlorinated paraffin in heavy neutral and 50wt% chlorinated paraffin in ISO 56 alkyl benzene. Here we see an interesting base oil effect where the use of polar base oils such as alkyl benzene give higher weld load than heavy neutral base oils.





Novitas has a wide range of NSF approved additives and base oils with some of the products listed in Figure 6 for food grade applications. AO-1300 is PANA antioxidant with excellent qualities. AW-TPPT is another example of excellent qualities where we offer the highest purity and noncorrosivity (see Figure 7) in industry with Kosher certification.





Figure 8 is the modular formulation approach where Novitas offers specialty additives (SA) including the three product categories, friction modifier (FM), anti-wear (AW), and extreme pressure (EP), presented in this talk, along with antioxidants (AO) and corrosion inhibitors (CI) for industrial/ grease applications. Through these specialties Novitas strives to provide innovative and quality products you can count on to win the race for better lubrication.