ILMA Compoundings - May 2019 - 48

IN NETWORK

Cross Connections
F&L Asia Announces Winners of the
2019 F&L Asia Awards
Satoshi Hirano, Boon Ping Chia and Total Lubrifiants
recognized for industry achievements
By Vicky Villena-Denton

&L Asia Ltd. is excited to announce the recipients of
this year's F&L Asia Awards. The presentation of these
prestigious honors, the only such fuel and lubricant
industry awards in Asia-Pacific, is a popular component of
F+L Week and highlights the exceptional performance of
Asia's fuel and lubricant industry pioneers.
The awards were presented during the F&L Asia Awards
Dinner at the Grand Hyatt Singapore on March 6. In
addition to the awards ceremony, recipients were featured
in F+L Magazine (formerly Fuels & Lubes International), the
flagship publication of F&L Asia.
Satoshi Hirano of Toyota Motor Corp. was this year's
recipient of the F&L Asia Person of the Year award. Hirano
has had a long and distinguished career at Toyota and has
been responsible for engine lubricant development and
research of engine oil-related phenomenon in the engine
division of Toyota since 2007. Hirano's influence on the
engine oil test landscape is extensive. He was recognized for
his outstanding leadership role in the research and development of the relationship between new engine hardware and
the resulting needs placed on engine oils.
The F&L Asia Person of the Year award recognizes an
individual's outstanding contribution to the fuels and
lubricants industry in Asia, whether he or she is from the
oil, additives, automotive or other stakeholder industry.
Before joining Toyota, Hirano worked for Chevron
Oronite for 12 years as an engine oil formulator. In his
current capacity, he regularly serves as a spokesperson for
Toyota and, at times, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers
Association (JAMA) during ILSAC (International Lubricants
Specification Advisory Committee) and ACEA (European
Automobile Manufacturers' Association) meetings.

MAY 2019

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Hirano identified and published initial work on the
engine oil impact on low-speed pre-ignition (LSPI) in
direct-injection engines - leading to the formation of an
industry consortium to study LSPI - and eventually to
the development of the ASTM Sequence IX LSPI test. The
Sequence IX is part of API SN PLUS and will be part of the
upcoming ILSAC GF-6 specification.
On behalf of JAMA, he worked with industry partners
to develop the Sequence IVB valve train wear test to be used in
ILSAC GF-6 and possibly ACEA categories, and was involved
in the development and publication of the Toyota Turbo test,
making the test available to the Co-ordinating European
Council (CEC) to be used in future ACEA categories.
Hirano has worked tirelessly on the development of fuel
economy data on SAE 0W-20, which was critical to convincing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
to approve the engine oil for certification purposes. More
recently, he has designed the matrix of tests demonstrating
fuel economy improvements between 0W-16 over 0W-20,
and Toyota sponsored all fuel economy tests. This program
convinced the auto, oil and additive industries to adapt
SAE 0W-16 as a part of the licensing of API SN/RC and
allowed negotiating the API SN/RC 0W-16 with the EPA
for approval.
Hirano is credited with a significant volume of technical
papers and has published journal articles on engine lubricant development and related phenomenon.
The F&L Asia Future Leaders award recognizes individuals in our industry who demonstrate the potential for future
leadership growth. The award was introduced following a
request from the fuels and lubricants community to extend
the categories to recognize our industry's next generation

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ILMA Compoundings - May 2019

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