The Oxidation Effect of Palm Oil Based Lubricant Using Four – Ball Tribotester

Abstract

Lubrications industry is widely expand throughout the years. Well established mineral oil based promised the highest demand all over the world. But as the environmental concern is debated at most of world conferences, people are thinking to find the alternative for mineral oil replacement due to its non-biodegradable behaviour. The best suited source that having quite a par characteristic with mineral oil is vegetable oil. Vegetable oil is well known with its super bio-degradable characteristic. The source is renewable and does not require huge cost as compared to mineral and synthetic oil in term of exploration, development, production and transportation. Palm oil based is best suited among the vegetable oil series because of its stability and sources around the world. The major issue of palm oil based lubricant is low oxidative stability as the lubricant is commonly used at very high temperature and long shelf life application. Therefore some modification of molecule structure is needed by adding selected anti-oxidant at certain ratios. Tertier-butyl-hydroquinone (TBHQ) is used as anti-oxidantin this study. The results showing that a sufficient concentration of anti-oxidantprovides better solution for the low oxidative stability issues raised in palm oil based lubricants. The TBHQ also showed good characteristic in protecting two mating surfaces in wear scar analysis.