Tribological Evaluation of Mineral Oil and Vegetable Oil as a Lubricant

Environmental pollution issue has made humankind tend to choose plant based oil instead of mineral based oil especially in lubrication usage. This decision is make based on several useful characteristic of plant oil where they are rapidly biodegradable, renewable, excellent lubricants and inexpensive to produce. Even though this oil show poor stability of oxidation and unfavorable properties at low temperature, currently researchers have proven that by altering the structure of plant oil it could solve this problem. Thus, several vegetable oil has been selected which are palm oil, jatropha oil and soybean oil to be test their performance in lubrication system for stamping and hydraulic purpose. These plant oils will be tested according to ASTM D 4172 and ASTM D 2783 by using four-ball tester machine. This experiment will be focus on the performance of plant oil as a lubricant and the effects of wear on the ball bearing based on the influence of the characteristics of plant oil itself.