Experimental Investigation on Usage of Palm Oil as a Lubricant to Substitute Mineral Oil in CI Engines

K S V Krishna Reddy,T Vijayakumar,Umesh Kunchum,Naval Kabra

doi:10.1155/2014/643521

K S V Krishna Reddy, T Vijayakumar + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/643521

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Abstract

Due to growing environmental concerns, vegetable oils are finding their way into lubricants for industrial and transportation applications. The substitution of mineral oil with vegetable oil as a base stock for an environment friendly lubricant in a CI engine is explored in this study without adding any additives. The experiments have been conducted with a mixture of palm oil and mineral oil, at different compositions. Blends of palm oil and mineral oil in different compositions, 0, 25, and 50 (by vol %) were added to base SAE20W40 mineral oil to obtain different lubricant blends. The parameters evaluated include brake thermal efficiency, brake specific fuel consumption, volumetric efficiency, and mechanical efficiency and exhaust emissions. The engine performance and emission tests were carried out on a single cylinder, water cooled, 4-stroke CI engine. Compared to mineral oil, the palm oil-based lubricant revealed appreciable expedience on engine and emission performance.

Highlights

Vegetable oil lubricants provide a renewable source of environmentally friendly lubricants, relating to the lubricant’s ability to biodegrade into harmless products
With the increase in palm oil percentage the mechanical efficiency is almost the same as that when the engine is operating with mineral oil alone
The decrease in mechanical efficiency can be observed initially due to increase in friction power as the palm oil percentage is less compared to mineral oil

Summary

Introduction

Vegetable oil lubricants provide a renewable source of environmentally friendly lubricants, relating to the lubricant’s ability to biodegrade into harmless products. There has been an increased concern in enhancing the use of biodegradable vegetable oils in lubricants, mostly by environmental as well as health and safety issues, emerging due to changes in economic and supply factors. Vegetable oils are low in potential pollutants like sulphur-containing compounds which can damage both environment and catalytic converter. The advantages of vegetable oils as base oil in lubricants as compared to mineral oils are nontoxicity, biodegradability, resource renewability, affordable application cost, high viscosity index, and so forth. Vegetable oils are usually much cheaper than ester based oils and provide more potential for the successful implementation as lubricants in base oil

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