Assessment of friction and wear characteristics of Calophyllum inophyllum and palm biodiesel
Introduction
The reduction in fossil fuel reservoirs and environmental pollution is increasing day by day (Restrepo-Flórez et al., 2014, Silitonga et al., 2015). Many researchers are working to find alternative fuels as a substitute for fossil fuels. Biodiesel is appealing as it is ecologically friendly and a renewable source. Nowadays biodiesel is used as an alternative fuel in Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the USA, France and Brazil (Kuss et al., 2015). It discharges little contamination and is artificially stable without influencing the environment. According to this prerequisite, lubricating additives ought to be consolidated to diminish the sulfur and phosphorus from diesel using hydro treatment (Lešnik et al., 2013, Shehata, 2013), which influences the lubricity. It is very harmful for the environment to add more additives, because of their sulfur and phosphorus content (Chauhan et al., 2012, Imtenan et al., 2015). Consequently, the present expansion of biodiesel utilization is a growing concern, together with the investigation of lubrication properties.
Lubricity is an important property of oils which can reduce friction and wear between the sliding components and extends the engine life. The lubrication can reduce the energy consumption of an engine by minimizing the friction between the sliding engine components (Tung and McMillan, 2004). A reduction in fuel consumption and an increase in engine life time by reducing friction and wear at the surfaces of mechanical components have become crucial, due to customer expectations and international competition. Various techniques have been employed to reduce friction in engine components like coatings (Arslan et al., 2015), texturing (Ahmed et al., 2016), use of light materials (Quazi et al., 2015) etc. The fuel injectors and fuel pump require lubrication and these are lubricated by the engine fuel. The lubricity of biodiesel gives a better performance than diesel fuel by reducing the friction. Lubrication properties of the fuel depends on the dynamic viscosity, which is the function of operating temperature, viscosity and pressure (Priest and Taylor, 2000). Van Gerpen et al. (1999), investigated the lubricity of soybean oil and soybean-based biodiesel and compared them. They indicated that soybean-based biodiesel was more efficient than soybean oil under tribological treatment (Silitonga et al., 2013).
Many reserachers used a four-ball tester to invesitgate the wear and friction characteristics of different biodiesels and their blends. Fazal et al. (2013), observed the wear and friction characteristics of palm oil biodiesel (B10, B20, B50 and B100) at different speeds (600, 900, 1200 and 1500 rpm), at a constant load of 40 kg and 75 °C temperature. The wear and friction decreased when the percentage of biodiesel and speed were increased. Temperature is very important factor for wear and friction characteristics. When the temperature was increased the wear and friction also increased and the percentage of biodiesel was more effective to reduce wear and friction in sliding components. When the percentage of biodiesel was reduced the wear and friction also increased (Haseeb et al., 2010). Kumar and Chauhan (2014), observed the wear and friction characteristics of jatropha biodiesel blends (20%, 40% and 100% JOME) with a four-ball tester at 1800 rpm. This test was conducted at different temperatures (45 °C, 60 °C and 75 °C) and different loads of about 40 kg, 50 kg, and 60 kg within a time duration of about one hour. The lubricity of jatropha biodiesel increased with an increasing biodiesel concentration, reduced load and temperature. These observations demonstrate the lubricity properties of biodiesel are affected by temperature, oxidation, absorption of moisture and so forth. The CI and palm biodiesel have higher viscosity, flash point and acid value properties, which shows better lubricity than diesel and other biodiesel (Knothe and Steidley, 2005, Patil and Deng, 2009).
Both Calophyllum inophyllum and palm biodiesel have good cooling characteristics and contain a high amount of oil content (Mofijur et al., 2014b, Silitonga et al., 2013). Although the tribological characteristics of palm and CI biodiesel have been characterized, further systematic research to compare different biodiesels is necessary. The present study aims to investigate and compare the tribological characteristics of CI and palm biodiesel.
Section snippets
Biodiesel production and blend preparation
For biodiesel production, crude palm oil was collected from the Malaysian local market and crude C. inophyllum oil was collected from Indonesia with the help of foreign suppliers and personal communication. The Energy Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Malaya, was used to produce CI and palm oil-based biodiesel by the transesterification process. The C. inophyllum and palm biodiesel production process were followed by the reference (Rahman et al., 2013). In this
Friction characteristics
The friction changed with variations in load and temperature. At the starting point of every test the characteristics of friction were not stable within the time called the run-in period, or unstable condition. After some time, the condition stabilized, i.e., a steady-state condition was achieved. Fig. 2 shows the COF for CI and palm biodiesels, with respect to time at 40 kg load. This fig. shows COF with respect to time for two different conditions: (a) run-in period; and (b) steady-state
Conclusion
We compared the tribological characteristics of C. inophyllum and palm biodiesel blends with various load and temperatures. The results suggest that PB20 displays the most favorable lubricating performance in terms of friction and wear. Therefore, this can be used in automobile engines to enhance the engine life.
- 1.
At the unsteady state condition, diesel shows the maximum COF among all the tested fuels under different loads. The presence of ester compositions in biodiesel may cause this result,
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thanks University of Malaya for financial assistance by means of High Impact Research grant project: “Clean Diesel Technology for Military and Civilian Transport Vehicles” of grant number UM.C/HIR/MOHE/ENG/07 and FP032-2013A.
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