TLT: How long have you worked in a lubrication-related field, and how did you decide to pursue a career in the lubricants industry?
Luycx: After my military service in the Belgian Army, stationed in Germany, I started to look for a job and was recruited by Texaco in October 1988.

I obtained a bachelor of science degree in industrial chemistry at Hogeschool Gent in Belgium, where petrochemistry was part of the lesson package. Some of my schoolmates were already working at the Texaco Research Centre in Ghent, and I was invited in early October 1988 for a job interview. A week later, I was given the opportunity to start at the Texaco Research Centre with the promise that I would become part of the new industrial lubricants development team to be created in 1989. During the transition period, I was placed in the main laboratory to learn and perform routine oil analysis.

In the main laboratory, I learned to run all the routine lubricant analytical and bench tests. Gradually, I was appointed to run special tests and, at a certain moment, I became responsible for the maintenance of the laboratory equipment for the part of the lab that I was working in. I learned a lot during this period as I kept asking questions to my trainers. I also was involved in the first quality certification work requested by our customers. My tasks were focused on calibration, fine tuning of test methods, making translations of German standards, etc.

A little later than initially planned, I became a team member of the industrial lubricants and grease development group. Very soon, I was given the opportunity and responsibility to co-develop lubricants under supervision of the more experienced product developers, and in April 1993, I became responsible also for grease product development in Europe.

I received in-house training in Ghent and traveled to the U.S. to receive an in-depth training from my Texaco U.S. colleagues in Port Arthur, Texas, where Texaco had a research center as well. Later, I could enhance my grease knowledge by attending training courses at bearing manufacturers, at industry organizations like NLGI and ELGI and from grease experts outside of the Texaco organization. By getting training from many different people and companies, I learned the vision of different people—sometimes their views were different, and from these different views, I created my own view. But it is part of the learning process to find your way between these different points of views. Next to the theoretical knowledge, it is of utmost importance to feel, to smell and to touch the grease to fully understand the product’s aspects.

Additionally, you also need to understand the products from the competition. Only when you know their products, their strong and weak points, their compatibility properties, etc., are you able to make the right product recommendation and correct technical support.

This product and application knowledge gave me the opportunity to become part of a small team that would work internationally between Chevron, Caltex and Texaco. The purpose of this team was to discuss and select products to be listed in the lubricant manuals of many OEMs operating worldwide. I was familiar with the product lines of Chevron and Caltex since my early days at Texaco. Although today we are one and the same company, in those days, Chevron and Texaco were independent oil companies, having Caltex as a 50/50 joint venture—I would not have been expected to know the Chevron products pre-merger. So, when we visited some OEMs later, I could make use of my product booklets for Chevron, Texaco and Caltex. Before the merger between Chevron and Texaco, I also was responsible for the product development of many industrial product lines like industrial gear oils, compressor oils and hydraulic fluids, including greases.

After the merger of Chevron and Texaco, product development was centralized in the U.S., and I became the technical support expert for all industrial oils and greases in Europe and Northwest Africa.

TLT: What has been your most rewarding accomplishment throughout your career in the lubricants industry?
Luycx: Below are the top three rewarding accomplishments throughout my career.
 • One of my first projects was to review the complete grease product line in 1993, followed by a second review in 2000 where I worked in a small working group to set up a set of grease specifications that enabled the company to operate for 21 years without major quality issues.
 • The creation of several application databases and an OEM approval letter database. Since I’m a computer literate person, I scanned in the OEM approval documents and saved them as PDF-formatted documents. This type of activity is now a very common process, but in the mid-1990s, it was relatively new. Adobe invented PDFs in 1991. A few years later, it became available for everyone.
 • I filed, together with my manager Jan Arickx, a patent on “electrical insulating oil compositions and preparation thereof.” The scope was defined as an effective composition of an electrical insulating oil from an isomerized base oil.

I was a member of the team that created STLE Brussels in 1996, when our colleague John Hermann was STLE president (1996-1997)—it was the first STLE division in Europe. I’m also a member of several working groups like ATIEL, the German working group SET on lubricant recommendation manuals of OEMs, ELGI, etc. I’m often not in an active visible role, but in some cases, I do a lot of work behind the scenes. The information I share with my colleagues sometimes has an important impact on the daily activities of several teams in the organization.

TLT: What is the No. 1 piece of advice you will give to a person who might be interested in starting a career in the lubricants industry?
Luycx: There are still many jobs available in the lubricants industry, but I only can speak about how I came into this industry. It does not really matter what degree you obtained—the real learning process starts when you are in the job. Preferably, you should start working in the laboratory to understand all aspects of the specification tests, then move on to product development or a technical support function. To become an expert, you must be willing to learn. That learning process never stops; it will only stop when you retire and, even then, there will still be new things to learn. My recommendation is not to jump around from one position to another every three to five years, as then you will never become an expert.

The COVID-19 pandemic taught us how to deal with all the business-related issues such as working from home and virtual meetings. But there also is a positive side. Many training webinars were made available online. In this way, you still could enhance your level of expertise while not being physically present. These last two years, I attended more trainings than I did in the previous 10 years. For new people, this is really an opportunity now.

TLT: Throughout the different segments within your career, which one has been the most interesting, challenging and/or rewarding?
Luycx: Once a product developer, always a product developer. If you graduate from school and you begin directly in this job, you might not appreciate it immediately. But afterward, you realize the importance of it. Once you have learned how to develop a product or assisted colleagues with their product development projects, you realize the fun of being creative and thinking outside of the box to come up with solutions, like in the case of specialty products, where finding a solution is a challenge to solve a problem.

TLT: What are some of the most technical lubrication-based concepts or topics you have encountered throughout your career?
Luycx: Today we have the capability to cope with many of the issues in the industry, like varnish and white etching. But in recent years, a big focus is on how we can meet expectations around sustainability, circular economy, low carbon footprint, energy efficiency, etc.

Now that systems have become smaller, run hotter and are more demanding, properties such as surface tension, polarity and film thickness are becoming important. They were often neglected in the past, or just studied in certain lubrication fields. Pressure from recently introduced new legislation is forcing product developers to look at lubricants in a completely different way. Also, the new portfolio of energy sources (such as electricity and hydrogen) presents opportunities for the lubricants industry.

One thing is sure from my point of view: greases always will be needed. Additionally, we see a substantial shift from mineral oils to synthetic base oils. But it’s clear, these synthetic base oils will have to come more and more from sustainable sources. Also, re-refined base stocks will find their way more and more in the lubricants industry. Specialized materials and ingenious solutions will be used for cooling and heating—think about the batteries of cars that need cooling. It seems that in many lubrication systems, the key focus will be on optimizing the oil film thickness—achieved by the right viscosity, temperature control and careful selection of additives to work in combination with specialized metal and composite alloys.

Whatever the future brings, there will be interesting times, and the impact on the lubricants industry will be huge.

You can reach Johan Luycx at luycxjr@chevron.com.