Industrial Lubricants: Safety, Sustainability, and Performance
Industrial lubricants play a key role in reducing friction, protecting machinery, and minimizing wear. However, traditional lubricants, based on petroleum derivatives, are often toxic, poorly biodegradable, and can pollute their surroundings if not properly managed. To move towards economic improvement and meet new environmental standards, the industry requires lubricants that not only maintain high energy performance but are also safe for people and environmentally friendly.
Lubricants designed to be degradable or derived from more sustainable sources offer a better solution: they reduce the carbon footprint, decrease CO₂ emissions, and contribute to a cleaner and safer industry.
SITOLUB: Simulation for Next-Generation Lubricants
SITOLUB (Simulation Tools for the design of Safe and Sustainable Lubricants) is an initiative bringing together 12 partners from 7 countries (9 from the EU, plus the United Kingdom and Switzerland). The project has a clear objective: to develop a digital platform that enables the Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) approach in the formulation of modern lubricants.
Platform Features
• Molecular modeling and QSAR, as well as molecular dynamics simulations, to assess human toxicity, environmental ecotoxicity, and occupational risks.
• Tribological simulations that predict friction, energy consumption, material durability, fluid degradation, and chemical reactions under real conditions.
• Life cycle assessments (LCA) and techno-economic assessments (TEA), ensuring that each lubricant is efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally responsible.
• Interoperability between data and tools, and validation at the i-TRIBOMAT testbed, ensuring reliability and technical quality.
ProtoQSAR: QSAR Models at the Service of Green Chemistry
At ProtoQSAR we are responsible for developing the predictive QSAR models integrated into the SITOLUB platform. Our contribution includes:
• Assessing human toxicity, ecotoxicity, and physicochemical properties of new molecules in lubricant formulation.
• Integrating toxicity and physicochemical predictions with experimental data, enabling the filtering of hazardous ingredients or those with undesirable properties from the early stages of design.
Thanks to our expertise in computational toxicology and chemoinformatics, we help ensure that the lubricants being developed are effective, safe, and aligned with the highest standards—without the need for preliminary experimental testing.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (Innovation Action) under grant agreement No. 101138807.
