Feasibility of Developing a Sustainable and Eco friendly Lubricating grease with Rice bran oil as a potential base stock

Abstract

moving machine parts, friction and wear are unavoidable. Different types of lubricants are used in the industrial sector to control friction and wear. Grease, which comes under the newlinecategory of semi-solid lubricant, is a combination of base oil with thickener. The vast majority of commercial greases are mineral oil based. The disposal of these mineral oil-based newlinelubricants is one of the major issues faced due to their non-biodegradability. The current newlineenvironmental concerns and increasing pollution regulations force industries to find an effective eco-friendly alternative solution. Vegetable oil is considered a viable source for newlinebio-lubricant formulation. newlineResearch works in the area of bio-grease are limited, with no works reported on rice newlinebran oil-based grease. In the present study, rice bran oil (RBO) was selected as the base oil for developing bio-lubricants. The most common grease thickener used in most industries is newlinelithium complex thickeners. Presently, electric vehicles use lithium-ion batteries. Since the industrial usage of a scarce material like lithium is increasing, there is a necessity to find an newlinealternative solution for lithium grease. This project is mainly investigating the technical newlinefeasibility of developing a bio-grease using rice bran oil with a non-lithium thickener. The lubricant properties of grease such as tribological, drop point, consistency, mechanical newlinestability, evaporation loss, oxidation stability, and corrosion stability are evaluated as per newlineASTM standards. newlineThe optimization of calcium thickener composition and grease formulation newlineparameters based on tribological and consistency of rice bran oil-based grease was performed newlineinitially. Then the lubricant properties of grease were further enhanced by using various newlinecomplexing agents like sebacic acid, phthalic acid, dodecanedioic acid, azelaic acid, and newlineadipic acid. Among the complexing agents used, dodecanedioic acid is found to be the best complexing agent. It was observed that the oxidation stability and drop point of the rice bran oil-base