BIOBASED LUBRICANTS: A VIABILITY STUDY
Adam Ing
151 Booth Ave
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4M2M5
黄油是什么味道adam.ing@utoronto.ca
ABSTRACT
Biobad lubricants are an attractive alternative to conventional petrobad lubricants due to a number of their physical properties including: renewablility, biodegradability, high lubricity and high flash points. Biobad lubricants have not replaced petrobad lubricants due to their higher cost, oxidative and thermal instability and limited temperature applications.
Rearch has been done to improve the physical properties of biobad lubricants.Dupont has bioengineered soybean eds to yield soybean oil that is more oxidatively stable. The Prileshajev Epoxidation Process was developed to increa the oxidative stabilty of soybean oil. The Amberlyst 15 Catalyst was ud to Reduce Pour Point of Vegetable Oil.
Biobad lubricants are generally more expensive than petrobad lubricants,but their incread lubricity allows for monetary savings through a decread energy input requirement. As biobad lubricants are derived from vegetable oil, careful work must be done to balance the allocation of crop ud to make lubricant. Currently there is not enough arable land to support the widespread u of biobad lubricants, so a collaboration of industry and government policy must be ud to promote the u of biobad lubricants.
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INTRODUCTION
来姨妈吃什么水果Annually, 40 million tonnes of lubricants are consumed worldwide, to be ud in everything from car engines to office chairs. The most common type of lubricant is petroleum derived (petrolubricant). As the idea that oil soon may no longer be available, industries have been arching for a cheap, renewable source of lubricant. Biobad lubricants have been the most promising as they have uful physical properties, but they are also have undesirable physical properties that make petrobad lubricants the obvious alternative. Much rearch is being done to vegetable oils to improve the physical properties so that they may compete as a economical alternative with petrobad lubricants. Currently there are steps being taken towards creating an economy that prefers a biobad lubricant through policy, but there are complications in the perception of biobad
oil and the allocation of arable land. The world cannot completely switch over to biobad lubricants, it must be a gradual process requiring the collaboration of government support, agriculture, industry and rearch.
BACKGROUND
Following the rapid economic growth in Asia in the last decade, the demand for lubricants has rin sharply. The world annual consumption is 40 million tonnes, and is projected to continue to ri 1.6% annually for at least the next 3 years (TransWorldNews, 2009). As only a small fraction of lubricants are recycled, we are currently looking for a renewable source of lubricant to meet the growing demands of the economy.
Biobad lubricants are currently ud in a limited number of environmentally-nsitive industrial applications such as agricultural machinery or machines in clo proximity to water.Biobad lubricants are ud in the applications becau they are non-toxic, and would create a much smaller disturbance to the ecosystem if there was a spill. Biobad lubricants are also sometimes ud in consumer goods such as petro/bio lubricant motor oils blends, but the high concentration of petroleum makes them harmful to the environment.
PETROBASED LUBRICANTS VS BIOBASED LUBRICANTS
Petrobad lubricants share many similar physical properties with biobad lubricants, but have a much different environmental impact.Petrobad lubricants are more commonly ud than biobad lubricants becau they are cheap,and can satisfy lubricant demands.Biobad lubricants is an attractive alternative becau of their uful physical properties, and they are clean and renewable.
Petrobad Lubricants – Background and Physical Properties
Petrobad lubricants currently dominate in commercial markets for three major reasons. Firstly, petrobad lubricants are the cheapest alternative, making them attractive for application or inclusion into a wide variety of consumer goods (Office of the Federal Environmental Executive 2009; AMSOIL Syntheic Oil Canada, n.d). Secondly, petroleum is abundant readily accessible to satisfy the global demand for lubricant. Lastly, petrobad lubricants have the longest drain interval (the operating life of a lubricant) of the lubricant alternatives, which lowers the downtime of the machine as completely changing the lubricant takes a significant amount of time. .
Although petroleum bad lubricants posss many uful physical properties,they are also non-renewable and toxic to the environment. If improperly dispod, petrobad lubricants may leech int
o water systems, cau infections and possibly death to organisms. Industrial machines ud in offshore drilling or agriculture require machinery to be in clo proximity with a water source, and using petrobad lubricants can potentially be dangerous to the environment. Environmental groups have pressured industrial groups to u biobad lubricants instead of petrobad lubricants in the situations (IENICA, 2004).
Vegetable Bad Lubricants – Background and Physical Properties
There are many petrolubricant alternatives available, such as synthetic or animal fat lubricants, but lubricants derived from vegetable oil have received the most attention due to a number of their uful physical properties.Firstly,biobad lubricants have a higher lubricity and thus a much lower coefficient of friction when ud when compared to petrobad lubricants.Secondly,biobad
lubricants have high flash points, which makes then effective in high temperature environments to preclude evaporation or dissipation. Thirdly, they have relatively stable viscosity indexes, so that they are uful over a large range of temperatures. Fourthly, biobad lubricants are generally derived from vegetable oils, and processing can be clean and renewable. Lastly, biobad lubricants are easily dispod of as they are non-toxic and biodegradable. The properties make biobad lubricants an attractive alternative to petrobad lubricants (Honary 2001).
Although biobad lubricants have many uful properties, they also have a number of drawbacks that are associated with most organic materials.Firstly,biobad lubricants are fully biodegradable becau they oxidize easily, but the rapid oxidization requires them to be changed more frequently. Secondly, the initial cost per volume of a biobad lubricant is generally two to three times that of a petrobad lubricant. Thirdly, biobad lubricants can only be applied over a moderate range of temperatures as they have high pour points in cold and low thermal stability in heat.Finally, specialized crops (rather than food byproducts) are the raw materials for higher quality lubricants, diminishing sources that would otherwi be applied for food production
CURRENT RESEARCH
The amount of rearch in biobad lubricants has drastically incread as the public has become more environmentally conscious. Most of this rearch is to improve the physical properties of biobad lubricants through bioengineering and chemical process, but there is also much rearch being done to improve the physical properties of vegetable oils through the u of additives and is outside the scope of this paper. Rearch has lead us to the discovery of soybeans high in Oliec acid, the invention of the Prileshajev epoxidation, and new us for the Amberlyst-15 catalyst.
High Oleic Acid Soybeans Yield Oxidatively Stable Vegetable Oil
suv口碑排行Vegetable oils high in Oleic acid such as rapeed, soybean and sunflower have become the preferred raw materials for biobad lubricants. Vegetable oils with high concentrations of Oleic acids yield stable lubricants that oxidize much more slowly (Castro 2006). While conventional soybeans contain approximately 20percent Oleic acid,whereas Dupont has bioengineering a soybean ed with a concentration of Oleic acid over83percent.This derived oil was shown to be30times more oxidatively stable than conventional soybean oil in hydraulic pump tests (Honary 2001). Additionally, the modified soybean ed does not differ nutritionally when compared to a conventional soybean, but the ed is generally more expensive to purcha, preventing it's widespread u (Castro 2006).
Prileshajev Epoxidation Process ud to Increa Oxidative Stability of Vegetable Oil Vegetable oils have poor thermal stability and are oxidized rapidly due to the double Carbon-Carbon bonds in their molecular structure.Techniques ud to saturate vegetable oils include: transterfication,lective-hydrogenation,and lective hydrogentation via epoxidation.The epoxidation process has received the most recent interest as the oxirane ring is highly reactive and can be further procesd in moderate reaction conditions (Lathi 2007). Currently Prileshajev epoxidation is the most popular epoxidization process,ud to annually generate200.000tonnes of epoxidized soybean oil (Maurer, 2005). As en in Illustration 1, this process us Hydrogen Peroxide in the
prence of a mineral acid to break the double bonds in the triglyceride and forming peroxy acids. The resulting saturated molecule is much more oxidatively stable, but increas the pour point of the oil, limiting the epoxidized vegetable oil to higher temperature applications.
蕾丝边俱乐部Illustration 1: Prileshajev epoxidation (Maurer 2005)
Amberlyst 15 Catalyst ud to Reduce Pour Point of Vegetable Oil科技手抄报图片
Biobad lubricants generally have high pour points, which prevent them from being ud in lower temperature applications. A process has been developed by Piyush et al. to lower the pour point of the epoxidized soybean to as low as -15 degrees Celsius by treating epoxidized soy bean oil with branched alcohols in the prence of the catalyst Amberlyst 15. As en in illustration 2, the epoxide undergoes a ring opening reaction and forms bonds with the alcohols. It was shown that longer branched alcohols resulted in lubricants with lower pour points. The catalyst Amberlyst 15 has the effect of allowing the ring opening reaction to occur on 100% of the sample. The altered product also maintained the viscosity and biodegradability of the epoxidized vegetable oil.The catalyst was reusable to an estimated 5 reactions, which allows for greater economic viability (Lathi 2007).
Illustration 2: Ring-opening reaction of epoxidized vegetable oil with n-butanol (Lathi 2007)
ECONOMICS
There are three major aspects of the biobad lubricant economy that must be considered in order for it to be an effective alternative.Firstly,commercial business will choo biobad lubricants as substitutes for petrobad only if they are cost effective. Secondly, available arable land to grow raw materials for the lubricant is limited, and the amount of land dedicated to growing lubricant must be carefully allocated to prevent food shortages. Lastly, the world does not have the physical, social and political infrastructures that encourage and/or make feasible a economy that prefers biobad lubricants.
Energy Savings from the High Lubricity of Biobad Lubricants
Biobad lubricants can be superior to petrobad lubricants in many applications,but they are generally about three times as expensive to purcha. This initial acquisition cost may deter potential buyers, but is offt by reduced energy costs resulting from the high lubricity of the biobad lubricants. As en in table 1, biobad lubricants lower the coefficient of friction at the pitch point much more than petrobad lubricants. At higher temperatures, the coefficient of friction at the pitch point drops dramatically in the prence of biobad lubricants indicating increasing lubricity. Petrobad lubricants also increa in lubricity as temperature increas, but they increa at a much less pronounced rate. This high lubricity makes biobad lubricants an attractive alternative to u in various high temperature applications such as injection moulding equipment or heated press (Cliff, 2007).
Table 1: Coefficent of friction at pitch point in the tooth flank (Cliff, 2007)
入乡随俗的意思The high lubricity of biobad lubricants result in mechanisms with lowered energy input needs, varying depending on the application. Indicative energy savings include (Cliff, 2007):
-Hydraulics – 1-3% energy savings
-Plastics Injection Moulding equipment – 2-3% energy savings
-Compressors – 2-7% energy savings
-Worm Gears – 15-30% energy savingswps怎么截图
-Spur Gears – 1-5% energy savings
As en in illustration 3, the cost of operating a machine is 96.02% from the operating energy requirement. Increasing the effectiveness of the lubricant can result in large savings in energy and maintenance costs. As an example, a 100HP compressor using a biobad lubricant instead of a petrobad lubricant, operating on a full load over three shifts would save approximately $750(CAD) annually. Biobad lubricants reduce maintenance costs of the machine as the decreas
ed coefficient of friction will minimize the gradual degradation that a machine is expod to during operation. The incread cost of the lubricant is negligible when compared to the savings in energy in maintenance costs (Cliff, 2007).
Food vs Fuel Debate
Between 2005 and 2008 food prices ro dramatically, at the same time that biofuel production
incread. In Brazil, (although food production stayed the same) corn has tripled in price since biofuel has become a common energy source (Beatty, B. and Aubele , M. 2008). Like biofuels, biobad lubricants are derived from vegetable oils, thus arable land must be carefully allocated to prevent further increas in food prices.
Unlike biofuels, a specialized crop high in Oliec acid is required to make a quality lubricant.
Fortunately the soybean developed by DuPont does not differ nutritionally, allowing flexibility in the u of the soybean. This flexibility only applies to soybeans and therefore other crops may need to be more carefully allocated.
The lubricants that are derived from crops are usually chon from a pool of specialty crops. The specialty crops are sometimes subsidized, and generally have higher premiums than food crops. There is a trend in the US for large scale farmers to dedicate a portion of their land that is normally ud for growing food, to instead growing specialty crops. If this trend continues, it may be expected that food
prices will ri slowly as there is effectively a lower supply grain in the country (Wright, n.d)Illustration 3: Relative Lubricant, Energy and
Maintenance Costs (Cliff, 2007)
