TRIBOLOGICAL FEATURES OF REFINED, BLEACHED AND DEODOURISED (RBD) PALM OLEIN BLENDS WITH MINERAL OIL

Vegetable oil has been investigated to replace petroleum-based products due to its environment-friendly characteristics and has become a vital source of bio-lubricants. The usefulness of vegetable oil is its availability as one of the renewable sources. Additionally, the vegetable oils based lubricant has indicated the potentials for reducing carbon dioxide and hydrocarbon emission while operating in internal combustion engines and in industrial process. There are two ways for using vegetable oils as bio-lubricants, either by directly using the neat vegetable oils without blending or using certain blending ratio of the vegetable oils along with the commercial lubricants. In this paper, the influences of the blending ratio of mineral oil with one type of vegetable oil was investigated on the tribological characteristics and compared with commercial lubricant oil using the four ball tribotester. Refined, bleached and deodorized (RBD) palm olein was blended at volumetric ratio ranging from 20 to 80 % with commercial mineral oil. All experimental works were conforming to ASTM D4172. The results exhibit that some blends of RBD palm olein with commercial lubricant oil have lower the wear scar diameter compared to mineral oil. Blends exhibit lower the wear scar diameter and coefficient of friction compared to commercial lubricant oil. As conclusion, the blends of RBD palm olein with commercial lubricant oil has better tribological performance compared to commercial mineral oil or neat RBD palm olein.