SiToLub project – tribology for safe and sustainable lubricants

The most important international bodies for environmental regulation (e.g. OECD, UNEP, and UNFCCC) have highlighted growing concerns around the three major planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. To help mitigate climate impacts and reduce pollution, the European Commission (EC) developed the Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework as part of its chemicals and materials innovation strategy. This framework addresses long‑standing gaps in safety evaluation, sustainability assessment, and early‑stage design practices.

In the latest revision of the SSbD framework, the Commission emphasizes the importance of functionality as a key consideration in the assessment of materials. Functionality is now formally recognized as one of the three foundational pillars of SSbD, together with safety and sustainability. Despite this, its role is often underestimated: functionality should be regarded as an essential component of sustainability itself. Within Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is structured into four stages (raw materials sourcing, production, use phase, and end‑of‑life), the functional performance of tribological materials (e.g., lubricants, coatings) can significantly influence their overall sustainability profile. While this relationship is intuitive for tribologists, it is not always obvious to LCA practitioners.

The SiToLub project, funded by the EC under Grant Agreement No. 101138807, aims to develop a digital infrastructure to support the formulation of lubricants according to SSbD principles. The platform under development will incorporate 24 QSAR models for evaluating the toxicological and ecotoxicological properties of chemicals used in lubricant formulations.

Functional performance will be determined using QSAR, molecular dynamics (MD), reactive molecular dynamics (rMD), and finite element method (FEM) simulations. These computational tools will provide predictions for key material and system parameters such as melting point, viscosity, friction, and wear.

For the sustainability dimension, the SiToLub project is developing an integrated solution capable of analyzing the lubricant’s full life cycle, together with its social and economic impacts. The platform includes also artificial intelligence functionalities to identify safer and more sustainable additives for lubricants and support multi-criteria decision making.

Regarding the environmental LCA specifically, SiToLub has developed a model that incorporates inputs from tribological testing and multiscale simulations to provide a holistic view of a lubricant’s environmental footprint—including impacts arising during the use phase, which is often overlooked in traditional LCAs. We will show how tribological testing and simulation inputs should be included in the use phase of sustainability assessment during the design phase of a lubricant.

The project is dealing with three practical use cases for the replacement of PFAS, chlorinated paraffines and benzotriazole, and for this reason has elaborated an experimental methodology suitable for the validation of the FEM models.