VBASE® Oil Company has been awarded a $2 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II Sequential award through the U.S. Army, W51701-25-C-A184, titled “High Efficiency and Sustainable Gear Lubricants for Demand Reduction.”
The program will deliver an Army-ready formulation built to exceed SAE J2360+ performance requirements, enabling measurable improvements in fuel efficiency, durability, and sustainability in military driveline systems.
The project builds on VBASE’s patented Secondary Polyol Ester™ (SPE®) base oil technology, which delivers excellent lubricity, oxidative stability, and low-temperature performance compared to conventional lubricants. These biobased, readily biodegradable base oils support enhanced fuel economy, reduced maintenance, and longer equipment life in demanding operating environments. The effort will formulate and evaluate two viscosity grades of SPE-based gear oils to demonstrate SPE performance inside finished lubricant systems that can be adopted by lubricant manufacturers and OEM partners.
Planned work includes comprehensive tribological testing, thermal and oxidative stability analysis, and evaluation of extreme-pressure additive packages, followed by field trials to quantify real-world efficiency and durability gains in Army platforms.
The resulting formulation will be a fully formulated, qualification-ready gear lubricant that de-risks adoption for lubricant manufacturers and OEM partners by providing a proven design that can be branded and commercialized by industry.
“This program gives us the opportunity to prove that high efficiency and high durability can coexist in a single gear lubricant based on SPE base oils,” said Zach Hunt, principal investigator.
“By pushing SPE- based formulations to and beyond SAE J2360+ performance specifications and validating them through advanced bench testing and field demonstrations, we expect to generate data that demonstrates meaningful fuel savings and longer component life for Army vehicles operating in the harshest conditions.”
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