Aidan Rose

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TLT: What do you think your background adds to your team?
Rose: It’s a pleasure to lead a team that works closely with creative industry experts and formulators. I trust my experience has ensured we have the projects balanced between immediate application needs and the longer term perspective of changing industry demands and issues, especially from OEMs.

My past responsibilities in testing, both vehicle emissions and conducting fleet test programs, have helped us move in this direction at Evonik, confident we can demonstrate transmission efficiency improvements with high quality data, especially as it has to be readily accepted by our customers and the industry in general.

We continue to do fundamental research on next generation additives, a strength the industry well recognizes in polymethacrylates from Evonik, and will continue to participate in longer term projects. I’m convinced the customers get a better offering and final outcome because we’ve checked more boxes before they see the materials. It’s not our customer’s job to develop our products for us. We work hard to understand the market, encourage customers to share their perspective and help define what they want from us. We share our learnings at conferences and regional industry meetings and believe the industry benefits from the flow of expert papers and publications for knowledge sharing. A little selfishly, there’s also company promotion and the benefits for individuals as part of their career development and peer recognition.

With past experience coordinating new product market introductions, I’ve worked to ensure we have a practical, selective view on what we need to develop and that our customers receive robust, effective experimental and branded additives, with good supporting data. This can take more resources and effort with longer lead times before pre-commercial sampling, or a creative approach, if we work to optimize a tailored product in formulations for important customer projects.

All this is made possible by continued demand from the market for improved energy efficiency solutions and the commitment from Evonik to be in this business segment for the long term.

My scientific background has always made for easy technical dialogues and comprehension. I guess I have a mechanical bent, and with some physics, I can usually make some contributions when physical fluid phenomena are on the agenda. I stopped playing under the car hood years ago—systems got way too complex for an amateur like me. Motorcycles proved to be easier, even though electronics are changing there as well.

TLT: Describe the industry’s biggest gear challenge today.
Rose: In automotive markets, it’s all about OEMs meeting emissions targets, and a key contributing element is the drive for constant improvement of drivetrain fuel efficiency.

In industrial markets, we see technical challenges to ensure durable service life, especially in large gearbox systems such as wind turbines. There is a growing trend to search more intensively for industrial energy efficiency opportunities, where well-designed lubricants can demonstrate less power loss and deliver measurable cost benefits to end-users. We are developing our NUFLUX™ technology to serve this need, for example, in general industrial gear oils.

Lubricants for gearboxes, whether automotive or industrial, continue to develop to service evolving and diverse mechanical designs. They are expected to last longer (in some cases provide fill-for-life), run reliably at higher temperatures and manage this with lower sump/system volumes.

For example, hybrid transmission lubricants may need to ensure performance for both mechanical and electrical component cooling, provide gear and bearing wear control and meet some challenging materials compatibility issues.

As automotive transmission designs vary considerably and serve various vehicle emissions requirements, the lubricant suppliers must continue to provide tailored, highly cost-effective lubricants for automotive drivetrain energy efficiency and service life. Our challenge is to align with and contribute to this goal.

TLT: It seems a lot of the lubricants industry is focused on resource efficiency right now. Are you involved in any projects that bring resource efficiency to new markets?
Rose: Absolutely. Our DRIVON™ technology is generating a significant number of customer and OEM projects where improved fuel efficiency is a key attribute.

For example, for formulators with the option to select high-performance viscosity index improvers, either as alternatives to traditional OCP in engine oils or for improved viscometrics in ATF-type fluids, there is increasing interest in new polymer structures over conventional linear systems. One such example is Evonik’s COMB polymers. They deliver durable, fuel-efficient performance gains, often for lower viscosity formulations, while still retaining high-temperature high-shear and load-carrying performance.

We have seen up to 4% overall drivetrain fuel efficiency improvements over conventional oils. This level of improvement gets attention in a market where OEMs can be motivated to consider less than 1% economy improvements.

Some of these projects have already transitioned into ongoing business, so it’s gratifying to see these returns on our investment. This is no small issue, as the research and development timelines are typically several years long and the significant costs involved are sustained by our core business.

The long-established focus on engine oil fuel economy is accompanied by a parallel focus on ATF efficiency improvements. The complete powertrain system has been challenged to continue to improve efficiency, and given the complexity of engine-transmission integration, it has to be optimized as a whole entity. Perhaps an even bigger challenge is for lubricants to become more of an intrinsic design element in engines and transmissions from the outset, and for the cost-benefit balance to be better recognized by OEMs.

TLT: Is there any legislation that is actually holding back promising new developments?
Rose: Generally we don’t see legislation holding us back. If anything, the regional and national emissions and fuel efficiency legislation changes encourage us to develop improved performance from our automotive viscosity index improvers.

Nevertheless, we typically introduce new products to the market with full global product registrations to meet customer needs and certainly this is an issue. Registration timelines and growing and potentially significant costs weigh in the consideration. This becomes especially important as we adopt new raw materials and intermediates to expand our product portfolio. Therefore, we work especially close with customers on tailored products to ensure good transparency and understanding.

Specifically one aspect of legislation that comes to mind are national regulations requiring extreme low-temperature fluidity for wind turbine gear oils in regions where turbine systems would never experience these environmental extremes. To prevent damage from highly viscous oils, wind turbine manufacturers require preheating lubricants prior to circulating pump activation and system rotation. While it could be that special oils are needed for a few extreme winter locations, in general, this only serves to limit end-user lubricant choices where no risks exist. We think a more pragmatic approach could address variations in location and lubricant types, would expand competition and still serve to fully protect gearbox operations.

TLT: What would you like to be your legacy?
Rose: Satisfied customers, new products in development and my colleagues busy as always working to overcome the next challenges this industry so readily creates!

You can reach Aidan Rose at aidan.rose@evonik.com.