Process & white oils

Oils that go into the product, not only into the machine

This category covers two different things that meet at one point. Process oils are raw material: they go into rubber, plastics, adhesives, inks or cosmetics, and their main requirement is purity and batch-to-batch consistency — not lubricating performance. White oils are the highly refined fraction of the same family, colourless and free of aromatics, used where the finished product reaches people: pharmaceutical, cosmetic, food. The meeting point is the food production line, where equipment lubricant may accidentally touch product. There it does not matter how good the oil is as a lubricant, but whether it is registered for that kind of contact — a compliance requirement, checked at audit, not a technical one.

What H1, H2 and 3H mean

The categories come from the old USDA scheme, administered today by NSF. H1 is the incidental-contact lubricant, used on equipment where product may be touched — gearboxes above the belt, chains, food-air compressors. H2 is the no-contact-possible lubricant, used below the line. 3H are direct-contact release agents, for grills and moulds. The standard that organises all of this into an auditable system is ISO 21469, and in practice an audit asks for the product's NSF registration, the datasheet, and evidence that no H2 product is present in zones where internal rules require H1. For white oils used as raw material, the references are the pharmacopoeias — USP and Ph. Eur. — plus the FDA regulations on food contact.

How to implement it properly in a plant

Moving to H1 is less a change of product than a change of organisation:

Map the lubrication points by zone before choosing products. H1 everywhere is expensive and pointless; H2 where H1 was needed is an audit finding.
Flush the system completely when moving from a conventional oil to H1 — residues void the new oil's registered status.
Keep grease guns and cans marked and physically separated. The most common non-conformity is not the wrong product bought but the wrong one used.
Keep the current NSF registration on file, not just the datasheet; registration numbers are renewed.
Check H1 compatibility with the machine's seals and plastics — the base oils differ from conventional ones.