Evaluation of Palm Olein as Shaft Lubricant

Abstract

The demand and usage of vegetable oil utilization in lubricants for many applications increased prompting by continued growing environmental concerns. Today, vegetable oil attracts attention as biodegradable alternates for synthetic esters because they are cheaper and can be obtained from sources that are renewable. The main objectives of this experiment were to measure the friction force at various speeds and to observe the surface roughness before and after experiment. In this experiment, RBD palm olein as represented vegetable oil has been tested by compare the result with fully synthetic oil and mineral-based oil by using modified pin-on-disc machine. Pure RBD palm olein, recorded only 7.4% of increment of maximum friction force compared to results for mineral-based oil. Observation based on surface roughness show that RBD palm olein works as effective as fully synthetic and mineral-based oil since only 14.6% increment of overall surface roughness for the whole shaft. Therefore, the performance of vegetable oil which in this experiment is RBD palm olein, can be improve by adding additive so increase it properties such as can withstand at high load, high flash point parameter, small wear scar diameter, less oxidation rate, and coefficient of friction.