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Silver Series Lubricants by Ph.D. chemist, J. Ronald Spence of Lubricant Additives Research Co (LAR), overcomes the obstacles that hitherto have prevented silver from being used commercially in lubricants.

The silver contained in the oil finds it's way onto working surfaces, where it reduces friction and wear. When wear attempts to remove it, more silver is plated onto the surface, so it is the silver that wears and not the original surface.

In most vehicles, the savings on fuel pays for the oil change in about 3000 miles.

Briefly, the improvements include:

• Reduces long-term wear.
• Increased fuel efficiency by between 3% and 10%, depending on mechanical efficiency of engine. (Lower mechanically-efficient engines will have greater improvement with the Silver Series lubricant.)
• Increases horsepower.
• Triples duration of oil change intervals.
• Reduces engine wear by a factor of 6X.
• Reduced emissions and prolonged life of catalytic converters.
• Engines, transmissions, and differentials run more quietly.
• Significantly improves run-in or break-in, creating extremely smooth surfaces.

The primary drawback of the lubricant is that it doesn't mix well with other lubricants, and in some cases should not be used when certain lubricants have been used in the system.

    "The silver chemistry is what makes Silver Series lubricants top performers. Silver Series engine lubricants stand out so far from the tight cluster of current old technology engine lubricants that they fall into a separate technical class. This class is the Metal Based Lubricants. This not a new class of lubricants. It is a class of lubricants that has been in existence for a very long time, waiting for the proper time frame to be developed." -- J. Ronald Spence, Ph.D.

About Silver Series Lubricant

The following page content was adapted largely from documents provided to us by Dr. Spence.

Attributes

It is physically impossible for a properly functioning engine to shear down a Silver Series lubricant. This is part of why these lubricants cost more. Only the best components go into these products. Longer lasting bearings and camshafts are the result of using better components.

The following information is said to be supported in the open literature. These reasons explain why the engineering community typically prefers a silver based lubricant.

Reduces Long-Term Wear

Surfaces are not perfect, so it is the high spots that wear. The least improvement in long term wear recorded is 50% lower wear and the best is zero wear on a bearing. Silver over steel is a very low friction lubricated surface. Argon National Lab reported attempting to measure the friction coefficient of a lubricated silver on steel surface and it was too low to measure accurately. This is the source of the fuel economy increases with Silver Series. In a 89% mechanical efficient engine Silver Series delivers. 10 % HP increases at full throttle. This leaves 1% drag in the engine to support the bearings. The increases in big diesels are much higher due to the high drag on the inside of these engines.

Improved Engine Efficiency

The increase in engine efficiency attainable by using silver based lubricants is the result of both reduced-drag losses and reduced friction. The observed efficiency increase is about 10% in an 89% mechanical efficiency engine and 3% in a 96% mechanical efficiency engine. Observed efficiency increase is not an absolute number that may be quoted as a hard unchanging number, but is highly dependent upon the design of the engine. Further work has also uncovered an additional "Quality Factor" involved in determining the magnitude of response of an engine to the silver-based lubricants. This "Quality Factor" involves both metallurgy and precision of manufacturing. Loosely put, commodity mass-produced engines are what LAR has termed fast learners, meaning that their response to silver-based lubricants is very large. The other class of engines are slow learners, meaning that these engines are manufactured with few surface defects and top-grade metallurgy, so they respond very slowly over thousands of miles of driving.

The reality of this situation, is that increases in efficiency may be documented in carefully controlled testing in a real engine, but when the engine is placed in a vehicle and driven many overriding large uncontrolled variables are in effect. As a result, LAR does not actively sell increases in fuel economy. This decision is based on a very old concept in the business world - never sell something that cannot be delivered consistently. The real situation is that fuel economy increases are hidden in this veritable Snow Storm of information. It takes a great deal of effort to observe this increase in efficiency. Also, with very inexpensive fuel, most consumers are not interested in fuel economy. The situation is very different in a high compression diesel engine. Here, friction is very high, due to the very high ring-loading required. The fuel economy increases observed in the field in 300 to 500 HP diesels is 8% for a Semi to 50% for a flat bed truck with a vastly oversized engine.

Reduced Emissions

Research data available on the silver-based lubricants show a very positive effect on emissions. This is observed in older vehicles. Conventional engine lubricants contain zinc and phosphorous, since all use zinc dialkyl dithio phosphate-based technology. This is the primary wear reduction additive in engine lubricants. It has been linked to long-term poisoning of exhaust catalytic converters using platinum/palladium. The silver-based engine lubricants contain no phosphorous or zinc, so one would reasonably predict a positive effect if the flow of these elements to the converter is stopped. This is what the research data shows. The converter regeneration takes place in two steps; First, the carbon based deposits are burned away. This usually occurs in the first 3,000 miles. Following this burn-out, the activity (ability to oxidize hydrocarbons) increases for years of driving. The change is very large. LAR attributes this very slow change to the catalyst poisons being very strongly bound to the catalyst, so it takes a very long time for them to leave the converter surface.

Observation matches what fundamental catalysis would predict.

What is interesting about the effect of silver-based lubricants on aged catalytic converters, is the changes are very large and fall completely outside the capability of Federal testing conditions. Federal emission testing protocols assume that changes in emissions are going to be very small and will require elaborate test procedures to properly document them. With the silver based lubricants the changes are so large in vehicles with partially deactivated converters the local emissions station can document them with no difficulty. This makes the emissions research very simple and it can be seen by customers who save their vehicle test results. The silver-based lubricants cannot eliminate all emissions problems, but they can help with the most expensive malfunction; deactivation of the converter.

Low Friction

Silver will not bond strongly to steel at the atomic level. The atomic level is the point of origin of surface friction. Steel rubbing against steel in a lubricated system normally has a sliding coefficient of friction in the 0.07 to 0.08 range. This is 7 to 8 percent of energy being converted to heat. Silver against steel in the same system has a coefficient of friction in the 0.01 or less range. Friction coefficients in this low range are very difficult to measure, but all data show that the surface friction of silver-on-steel is very low. In 1997, Argon National Laboratory published a paper on lubricated silver on steel and mentioned that the friction was too low to measure accurately.

The commercial versions of the silver-based lubricants have long term wear rates that are 50% to 25% that of the zinc dialkyl dithio phosphate based lubricants. This is documented in very long running field tests. Reduced wear is the single most valuable property of the new silver-based lubricants. This reduction in long term wear is the easiest property to understand. By placing silver between two metal surfaces, it is the silver that is being worn and not the original surface. With silver in the lubricant, the silver being worn away is replaced at the rate it wears. One would speculate that zero wear might be observed in a perfectly behaved system. This apparent zero wear has been documented in long-term field tests for camshaft and crankshaft bearings.

Reduces Wear 6X

Silver Series reduced wear by a factor of 6X in engines. What we are finding is the higher the quality the engine, the better the results.

Not Washed Away with Polar Solvents

Metallic silver cannot be washed away with polar solvents like water, antifreeze, acetone or alcohols.

Oil Change Intervals are Much Longer

Oil change intervals are much longer. The oil change interval depends upon how dirty the combustion is in the engine and how much blow by gets into the oil but long term field tests show oil drain intervals increased about 3 times that of old technology oils.

Recommended change intervals are around 10,000 miles in gasoline engines. Big diesels are much longer.

No Sacrifices

Silver Series is the only oil on the market that pays for itself without causing other problems. Some of the new " higher performing" oils improve fuel economy by sacrificing bearing life.

Immune to Oil Dilution by Antifreeze

The silver chemistry is immune to oil dilution by antifreeze. This turned out to be important for a number of customers who had leaks from the coolant system into the oil. This normally results in a trashed engine but it has not with Silver Series customers.

Runs More Quietly

Over the years we have gotten feedback from customers that Silver Series makes engines, transmissions, and differentials quiet. A major transmission manufacturer found the same thing but this was just casual observation by an engineer. Finally we measured the sound produced in a commercial transmission with factory fill lubricant then again with Silver Series in the transmission. The sound with silver was attenuated in the 1000 Hz to 5000 Hz region. This is the center of the human hearing range. The absolute sound level was changed by a small amount. Silver does not pass sound at the same frequency as steel so sound is being reflected at surfaces where silver has deposited. This effect was predicted long ago based on quantum mechanical considerations but not reported until now. It is true that Silver Series lubricants can make mechanical devices appear to be quieter since the sound is attenuated in the most sensitive region of human hearing. The effect can be quit striking in a big noisy diesel engine.

Low Toxicity

Silver Series contains no toxic components. The amount of silver is small. If swallowed it would do the same thing as mineral oil. It will be a powerful laxative.

The EPA agreed to disposal in the same system as standards lubricants. I agreed not to sell Silver Series into marine uses. Silver is toxic to bacteria that live in lakes and streams.

Catalytic Converters

Since Silver Series contain no phosphorous or zinc, using them can result in reactivation of catalytic converters. A number of long term tests reproduce the results seen in a 5 L Ford in Arizona. Silver is a high-temperature carbon-burning catalyst, so diesels run cleaner.

High Temperature Capability

One quality of silver that has made it very popular with mechanical engineers, is its high temperature capability. Some aerospace research reports silver on steel systems operating in the 600 C range. This is red-heat range. Field data and internal research data indicate that the silver-based lubricants have a high temperature capability far above the melting point of aluminum and bearing materials.

No one knows the upper temperature limit of Silver Series. The seals melt and the aluminum in pistons melt before the upper temperature limit is reached.

High Thermal Conductivity

In journal bearing applications, the thermal conductivity of the bearing shell material is a very important property. The reason for this is heat generated during rapid loading (combustion pulse) in the lubricant must be transferred to the bearing rapidly to prevent oil film collapse. Silver has both high density and extremely high thermal conductivity, so it is one of the best materials available for journal bearings.

Refinishing Running Surfaces

Placing a very thin layer of a noble metal between two steel surface prevents transfer of metal from one surface to the other. This is very important during break-in or run-in. Initially, new machined surfaces are very rough. The break-in process finishes the machining process. With silver in the system during break-in, surfaces are forced to run-in by plastic deformation rather than by removal of material. The result is that steel surfaces run in using silver-based lubricants are extremely smooth. Little metal transfer occurs. This is important, since the potential of atomically smooth working surfaces is within practical reach for the first time. Surface filling of low areas on working surfaces occurs as well. This is observed if a section of the working surface is cut out and placed in a surface mapping instrument. Micro voids in the metal are filled with silver, resulting in a very flat surface. This filling of surface defects will prevent further degradation of the surface. This micro repair occurs at the micron and smaller range, so it is not apparent with conventional methods, such as a light microscope. Silver is the same color as steel to the eye. The silver on a steel surface is detectable using very simple surface friction studies. Friction is extremely sensitive to surface chemistry.

For the consumer, the refinishing process adds performance gradually. This performance is best described by " Pleasability Factor" used by application engineers. The consumer notices that the engine starts fast, and runs nice! These are rather obscure terms, but they indicate that the consumer is pleased with what is observed and what is not present.

Oil Changes

Unlike old technology, it is not possible to deplete or wear out metallic silver, since is continuously recycled inside an engine. Mother Nature gave silver a unique property. In an engine, its lowest energy state is metallic silver. Basic thermodynamics drives chemical reactions to products in the lowest energy state. This leaves only one pathway that limits the useful life of silver-based lubricants in an engine. This is accumulation of dirt and other abrasive debris. In lay terms, the internal combustion engine oil sump is being used as a garbage dump. Sooner or later the lubricant that is introduced as new clean oil is changed into something "unknown", due to addition of fuel by products and dirt. At this point, the lubricant has to be changed. This oil change point is at much longer oil change intervals than possible with old technology. The actual oil change interval is extremely dependent on the application, the efficiency of the combustion process and quality of the fuel. Examples - Diesels that generate abrasive soot have shorter oil change intervals than the new clean-burning diesels. Engines with fuel injection have longer oil change intervals than older carbureted engines.

Oxidation Stability

Silver in an engine lubricant apparently performs a function very similar to that reported for copper in engine oils. Addition of a very small amount of copper in the oil results in observation of increased oxidation stability. Likewise, the silver-based lubricants are exceptionally stable to oxidation in a fired engine. This is apparently a surface catalysis effect. By blocking the iron on a steel surface from participating in oxidation chemistry, the rate of oxidation reactions is reduced considerably. The amount of iron and other transition metals found in engine oil are also reduced considerably by reduction in wear rate, so the observed oxidation stability could be due to multiple positive functions. The above does not mean that Silver Series lubricants will not oxidize eventually. It does place the oxidation stability so far out of range, that other limiting factors like dirt and grim accumulation in the oil appear first.

Surface Analysis

Allows Lower Viscosity Lubrication

The silver-based lubricants refinish working surfaces and decrease surface friction. The data collected on silver-based lubricants shows new use rules. A 20W silver-based lubricant will outperform an old technology 50W in both wear and efficiency in fired engines. This allows the use of much lower viscosity silver-based lubricants than is allowed by old technology rules. Old technology rules indicate that use of a high-viscosity lubricant will prolong engine life. With the silver-based lubricants, long term wear is not very dependent upon oil viscosity. This fundamental change is being met with much resistance, so higher viscosity silver-based lubricants are available to satisfy the owner and not the engine.

"Synthetic"?

Some people ask if Silver Series is a synthetic. We make both synthetic and semi-other, if anyone thinks this means something useful. The silver is the key factor in Silver Series. We make a synthetic to satisfy some people's belief that the term synthetic means something useful. It does mean better cold flow performance in extreme conditions, like found in Canada or Alaska, but is not required in the main part of the USA.

Tribology

Silver is a soft metal compared to steel. It was found long ago that if a soft metal is used in a bearing shell a very forgiving system is generated. All machining processes generate very small deviations from perfectly round and absolutely true alignment. The steel will not yield but the soft metal will yield to generate the desired alignment. This discovery made the manufacture of the piston engine practical. Also, soft metals have the tendency to not bond to steel strongly at the atomic level. This helps prevent metal transfer that destroys bearings.

Affordable Pricing

One might expect the silver based lubricants to be very costly, but most formulations sell for the same price as other premium lubricants. The primary reason why silver-based lubricants are usually priced on the top end of the lubricants scale is not due to the silver contained but to the cost of extremely pure base oils that have to be used. The effectiveness of silver as an antiwear is so much greater than conventional wear inhibitors, that silver is very cost effective.

Other Attributes

During the research phase of development of Silver Series lubricants other additional properties were found that make these elegant lubricants exceptional and very practical.

Downsides =

Doesn't Mix With Other Lubricants

The Silver chemistry is not compatible with any other lubricant chemistry so mixing or dilution is not possible.

The sulfur in regular oils converts silver to black silver sulfide which not a very good lubricant. Changing to Silver Series reeps such benefits that it is worth any small inconvienience.

Just change the oil and filter.

The exceptions are oils like Mobil 1 and Casterol that contain Moly disulfide. I recommend that the oil be changed to one like walmart's 5W30 cheap oil. The moly disulfide is in the oil to cheat an engine test so the oil can get the starburst emblem.

If the engine has Slick 50 in it I tell them to forget Silver Series.

I also don't deal with racing people. Removing all the friction in a race engine just helps the guys blow it up faster. I had a Sprint car come off the track with the tech needle showing 13,000 RPM. This was a Chevy 350.

Oil Warning Light in GM Cars

GM cars with an oil sensor may trigger the warning light since the Silver Sries lubricant does not contain zinc dialkyl dithiophosphate which is the wear inhibitor in all API graded oils.

Testing

All of the performance data published for Silver Series lubricants is from fired engines either on a test stand or in a vehicle. Some of the preliminary data was generated in a section of a production engine. No bench test data is published. There are two reason for this. The most important is that data derived from bench testing is always suspect since a bench tester is not the real final application. Most bench testers are properly used only by researchers in the materials and lubrication area to research some of the finer points prior to full scale testing or to generate publication quality data. This publication quality data might or might not apply directly to full scale fired engine behavior. Engines are extremely complicated. Attempting to reproduce the behavior of an engine invariably leads to a bench test that is so complicated that it is much simpler and less expensive to use a real engine. If Silver Series lubricants are placed in real fired engines they perform consistently over a very long period. If placed in a bench tester, random results are obtained. This is not a new discovery. Most bench testers have evolved along with old technology. Numerous optimizations were made in materials and test conditions to achieve a good correlation with full scale test results. It was assumed that the base chemistry of the lubricant would be unchanging. This has been true for so long this base assumption was forgotten. If Silver Series is tested in a bench tester and odd results are obtained, the report will contain either a ? or a Fail Test flag. The ? is the correct flag since Silver Series performs in fired engines consistently. The bench tester is producing odd results since it does not truly reproduce the real system.

NASA in Cleveland owed me a favor so they ran a nose of a camshaft run on my silver oil in their surface mapping instrument and silver was all over the surface. Wear is reduced tremendously. My '89 Ranger has over 276,000 miles on it's drive train and it is still in new condition.

Silver Series is compared to Pennzoil. Both are 5W30s. Oil is sampled at intervals and analyzed for iron, lead. copper and aluminum. I used the local Caterpillar lab. Later we found that the amount of improvement in wear depends on the metallurgy used. In a diesel Silver Series 15W40 was compared to Shell Rotella. Silver Series was 5X better on wear reduction.

Coverage

In the News

• Article in the Kane Co Cronical May 28 1997.

Other newspaper have dismissed this new technology as fake immediately.

History

The earliest mechanical use of silver published in the modern literature was in a steam engine in the 1890's. Later, silver was used in a prototype piston engine in 1925. This was an era of experimentation in engines from all aspects. The silver was used in crankshaft journal bearings. Gold was also used. The silver bearing lay dormant until about the 1940's, when World War II interrupted the supply of chromium and nickel. Chromium and nickel are used in corrosion resistant coatings. This forced the use of silver in the Allied machines. The development of electroplating technology for silver allowed the development of silver-plated aircraft crankshaft journal bearings. In this use, silver was far superior to other bearing metals in its resistance to fatigue failure and was worth the added cost in aircraft to assure that the best and most reliable engines were available. During the '50's and '60's, silver found use in helicopter engines, since this application required absolute reliability. The development of reliable turbine engines forced silver out of the engines in helicopters, but silver found a new use in some combat helicopters in the tail rotor gears. Silver-clad rotor gears were (are) used, since the silver cladding provides a solid lubricant in case of lubricant supply failure to the rotor gears in a combat zone. Pilots of these combat helicopters indicate that the extra time added by using silver clad gears makes the difference in an uncomfortable hard landing and a crash. Today, silver is found in some marine gears and in severe duty bearings, where the retainers are silver plated. Silver is used in numerous applications throughout the aerospace industry. Here, the silver is deposited by a number of techniques not using electro-deposition. Most of the silver cladding uses one of the vacuum chamber techniques. The railroad diesel engines used today, have silver clad turbo-charger bearings.

Throughout the history of the use of silver in mechanical devices, silver was used when extreme performance was required. The main reason why silver is not used extensively today is cost. Silver-clad components require repair on a regular basis, since the silver wears away from the working surface. In a sealed bearing, the silver plating on the retainer wears away, but in this application the silver is deposited on bearing races and rolling elements, so with a compatible lubricant, this is as close to a self-repairing system as may be attained. Some heavy truck transmissions still use silver-plated retainers and require a special lubricant that is compatible with silver.

In the lubricants area, the first mention of a silver-based lubricant was in the mid '40's when a US patent was issued to Morgan of Conoco. This was a silver-based grease. There is no mention of the actual performance of this grease, except for physical properties. Silver, along with many other metals, was mentioned in the '70's in the Russian literature as a powder mixed with oil. The Russian literature called these mixtures "plating lubricants". Their intent was to introduce metal into the lubricant and have the metal plated onto working surfaces by physical transfer. Silver was also mentioned during the '70's in a US patent that used finely ground silver sulfate as a gear lubricant. No performance data was reported for any of these mentions of silver in lubricants, but it is obvious that their intent was to place silver into a lubricant and have the silver transferred to working surfaces to capture the performance of silver. Greases that contain particles of silver are sold today in applications that require electrical conductivity and as anti-seize compounds. These silver-based lubricants contain macro size silver particles. They are used only in a very narrow range of applications.

Previous attempts to place silver in a lubricant were based on physical methods, such as grinding and ultra-shear devices. With silver, the physical size limit of any physical process is limited by power per unit volume. As the size is decreased, power input increases. Attempts to place silver in a lubricant using a physical method resulted in ill-behaved lubricants that either settled on standing or had very limited application potential.

Silver Series lubricants are the most recent mention of silver in a lubricant. These new lubricants are transparent, so they do not have settling or stability problems. As a result, they have a very wide range of applications. As was envisioned by previous researchers, the silver in the lubricant does find its way onto metal working surfaces. This is observed by advanced surface mapping spectroscopic techniques.

Silver Series lubricants are the extreme performers envisioned by previous researchers. What was not envisioned by previous researchers is a host very positive performance properties that were discovered during their development.

Silver-based lubricants provide a unique set of performance advantages that together, set them in a class by themselves. Some of these were predicted long ago, but there are other performance advantages that are a pleasant surprise. Of course, well-behaved silver-based lubricants were not available until recently, so no direct experimental data was available.

The performance properties of silver based lubricants are best classified as predicted from the history of silver and performance discovered during their recent development by LAR.

Company

Lubricant Additives Research Co.

Official Website: http://www.silveroil.info

Inventor: J. Ronald Spence

See http://www.silveroil.info/me.html

Ron Spence, Ph.D., invented this technology in 1994. He has been making and selling these high tech lubricants since 1998 under an EPA approved permit. He holds a B.S., MS, and Ph.D. in Chemistry.

"I am supposed to be retired but still intend to make these lubricants 'til I die. I think people need to know about these lubricants."

Spence received a B.S. in Chemistry from the U of Alabama, a M.S. and Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the U of South Florida. He spent about 25 years working in research for oil companies and one bearing company. His area of specialization is called tribochemistry. This is the basic science of friction and wear as seen by a chemist. Engineers working in this area are called tribologists.

"It took a strange combination of fields of expertise plus some nonlinear thinking to result in a new lubricant like Silver Series. It is not like anything else. It required forgetting all the old rules and finding out what the new rules are for silver based lubricants."

Product Availability

Price

The wholesale price of Silver Series is about $20/gal, available for purchase through the company website. No retail quantities or pricing presently offered. "2 gallon cases on a trial basis, but 6 gallon cases are standard or 55 gallon barrels". All Silver Series lubricants are full synthetic blends.

Product Choices

Lubricant Additives Research makes a 5W20, 5W30, and a 10W40.

Compatibility

"These lubricants have been in everything that burns either gasoline or diesel, including the 350 Cummings and 440 Cat."

Manufacturing

Silver Series has been manufactured for about 10 years. Thousands of gallons have been manufactured during that time.

Patent

The silver lubricant technology is proprietary, since publishing it in a patent would result in very expensive litigations defending the patent. The US EPA agreed to hide the permit, so it is not published.

Contact

J. Ronald Spence, Ph.D. President.
PO Box 11
Marshallville, Ohio 44645
email: <jrspence {at} embarqmail.com>

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