The Single Technology Matrix Process For Base Oil Interchange

The Engine Oil Industry Base Oil Interchange (BOI) and Viscosity Grade Read Across (VGRA) guidelines developed by the American Petroleum Institute (API) provide a means to significantly reduce the time to market for current technology engine oils. This process has several advantages including the public display of data and a consensus evaluation of the submitted data. The process also has several limitations including timeliness of the consensus process, and the applicability and flexibility of an all-encompassing, industry-wide guideline.

An enhancement to the all-encompassing, industry-wide consensus process is the Single Technology Matrix (STM). The idea behind this approach is to use sufficient data from a single technology to develop and use BOI for that specific technology. The advantages of the STM include improved technical merit, timeliness and flexibility in establishing BOI. The exact, appropriate BOI can now be established for a particular technology as opposed to the limited option of discovering the least common denominator BOI that is appropriate for all technologies from all suppliers. A case study using actual Sequence IIIE engine test data is used to demonstrate the value of the STM approach.