Abstract:
Environmental pollution has been on a meteoric rise since the early 20th century due to
industrialization and petrochemical lubricants have played a major role in this regard.
Biolubricants however, are derived mainly from vegetable oils, degradable to microorganisms,
eco-friendly, and possess far better qualities when adequately processed. They have better
viscosity indices, flash point, pour points, excellent lubricity, improved coefficient of friction and
very skin compatible. They could be gotten from edible and non-edible oils such as vegetable
oils (soybean, sunflower, canola, rapeseed, linseed and rubber seed oils), low viscosity
polyalphaolefins, polyalkylene glycols among others. Without adequate treatment, they possess
some shortfalls such as high oxidative activity, poor bio-resistance, poor hydrolytic stability and
poor fluidity at lower temperatures. However, with chemical modifications such as acylation,
epoxidation, partial hydrogenation and trans-esterification, these activities can be greatly
eliminated. Recently, biotechnologists have been able to genetically modify some crops to
reduce the linoleic acid and linoleic acid content of the seed oils while increasing its oleic acid
characteristic. Thus, producing biolubricants with superior tribological characteristics. However,
high costs of production has greatly limited the commercial production of biolubricants since it is
a nascent technology, as against the environmentally-unfriendly petroleum lubricants. There is
therefore need for more investigations in this field |
