By Robert Johnson and Jim Fitch
Book chapter, Lubrication and Maintenance of Industrial Equipment, Best Practices and Reliability, Edited by Robert Gresham and George Totten.
Many of the materials essential to global industrial markets have been identified as being in potential short supply. A substantial number of those materials originate from regions of the world where interrupted supply is a real and present risk. Petroleum is a finite world resource with continuing supply and economic problems, with more special concerns for fuels than for petroleum-based lubricants. It is the objective of this chapter to present specific conservation practices for lubricants and functional (hydraulics, coolants, etc.) fluids used in tribological components and for energy. The treatment will necessarily be brief, but references will point to more detail information.