Enhancing Tribological Performance of Engineered Plastic Oil with Solid Lubricant Additives
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Authors
Sikdar, Soumya
Issue Date
2024
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Plastics are widely used in various applications due to their light weight, ease of production, and low cost. Despite their widespread usage, they have significant drawback of being non-biodegradable. If not disposed off appropriately, they cause extensive environmental pollution, posing health risks to living beings. To mitigate this issue, plastics can be recycled, and through chemical techniques, can be converted into useful products such as waste plastic oil (PO) lubricant. In this work, the lubrication performance of the PO was investigated. To further improve the lubrication performance, solid lubricant additives (SLAs) of graphene nano platelets (GNP), and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), were separately added to the PO, forming nano lubricants. The incorporated SLAs suffered from sedimentation and inadequate dispersion stability. To address these issues, and further enhance the lubrication performance of the PO, an oleic acid surfactant based chemical functionalization process was carried out on the SLAs. The impact of functionalization on the lubricant's rheological properties, thermal degradation resistance, dispersion stability, friction, and wear performances were evaluated. The significant insights gained from this study can help boost the lubrication performance of the PO, lower dependence on virgin petroleum-based products, reduce environmental pollution, and promote its broader adoption in industrial applications.