ABSTRACT
The production of polyalphaolefins (PAO), an important class of synthetic functional fluids, can be better controlled to form materials with given sets of desired properties than can the production of analogous petroleum-based fluids. The use of PAO’s as high performance functional fluids has received growing acceptance. The chapter reviews each of the commercial products has the widest range of physical properties possible from the known technology, and research demonstrating performance advantages of these products in variety of applications, particularly automotive applications. A variety of catalytic methods are known for the polymerization of linear a-olefins to low molecular weight oligomers. Polyalphaolefin fluids are manufactured in a two-step process. The first is the oligomerization step in which the starting linear a-olefin is contacted with a catalyst in such a manner that the olefin oligomerizes to a variety of low molecular weight products, each of which has a molecular weight that is a unit multiple of the starting material.
