Question for Oil Company Chemist

[Bill Tindall]

What is the general composition of "High Temperature Grease"? I have an excellent library match of IR spectra for my unknown greasy material and the library entry for high temp. grease. What little I know about the unknown is consistent with this assignment, but I still don't know chemically what it is. A colleague speculated that high temp. grease might be a high molecular weight branched hydrocarbon mixture, which is consistent with the IR spectra.

While I hang out on the LC side, I posted here as it seems more likely an oil company chemist might hang out here.

[Rafael Chust]

Dear Bill:

From my GC experience, I would say your colleague is correct.

High temp grease would be mostly heavyweight hidrocarbons, sometimes with funny (read sulphur, nitrous, etc.) functional groups.

There are some GC-FID techniques that simulates distillation, that gives a quite good idea what you might have in your oil.

[Bill Tindall]

thankyou