Vegetable oils as lube basestocks: A review

Abstract

The depletion of the world’s crude oil reserve, increasing crude oil prices, and issues related to conservation have brought about renewed interest in the use of bio-based materials. Emphasis on the development of renewable, biodegradable, and environmentally friendly lubricants has resulted in the widespread use of natural oils and fats. Vegetable oils are promising candidates as base fluid for eco-friendly lubricants because of their excellent lubricity, biodegradability, viscosity-temperature characteristics and low volatility. In view of agriculture based Indian economy, there is a great potential of producing vegetable oil based lubricants, which has ecological compatibility in addition to technical performance. However, suitability of the vegetable oils for a specific application either needs chemical modification or may be used as it is with additive blending route in order to get basestocks as per specifications for a particular end use application.

Keywords: Biolubricants, vegetable oils, biodegradable, renewable

African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(9), pp. 880-891