Experimental Investigation on Usage of Cotton Seed Oil as a Lubricant to Substitute Mineral Oil

Abstract

Lubricants and lubrication were inherent in a machine ever since man invented machines. The continued increasing environmental concerns force to increase the usage of vegetable oil utilization in lubricants for many applications. The vegetable oil is one of the alternative lubricant base stocks as it has environmental friendly and non-toxic characteristic. India has great potential in growing vegetable oil plants. Even though vegetable oil is one of the best alternatives for lubricant, the tribological properties of vegetable oil are slightly less than mineral oil. This research work is carried out to check the tribological properties of refined cottonseed oil, as a lubricant and compared to 20W50 lubrication oil. To improve the lubrication properties of cottonseed oil, chemical modification like transesterification is carried out. A common solution to improve the properties is to add effective additives into the base stock of vegetable oil which gives significant improvement in thermal as well as tribological properties of lubricant. The properties like viscosity, viscosity index, pour point of refined CSO and chemically modified CSO were tested and compared with 20W50 oil. The additives like MoS2, hBN and ZDDP are used by varying concentrations to enhance anti-wear properties and thermal stability. Four Ball Tester is used for tribological testing according to ASTM standard D 4172 procedures.

Keywords: Transesterification, Vegetable oil, Cottonseed oil, anti-wear additives