Nano Bio-Lubricant as a Sustainable Trend in Tribology towards Environmental Stability: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Bio lubricants derived from biomass can lessen the carbon footprint of production, lubrication, and energy production. When nanoparticles (NPs) additives are used, the performance improvement from the usage of bio-lubricant is more pronounced. This brief review highlights the key characteristics of current bio lubricants and the argument for utilizing sustainable bio lubricants that may be produced from agricultural feed stock with the potential to replace conventional mineral oil products. There is a need to shift to waste-derived oils and conduct research on alternative sources of bio-products to address the challenges of the lubricant/food competition, even though existing studies on bio lubricants have primarily focused on the use of vegetable oils and some non-edible oils. Most NPs additives combined with bio-lubricant, according to the literature, have the potential to reduce wear and friction. Furthermore, it was discovered that the NPs mechanisms during operations were responsible for the friction and wear reduction from nanofluids application. As a result, sliding contact was converted to rolling, and tribo-film was formed, separating the sliding bodies from direct contact. However, there are several complex problems related to bio-lubricant that should be handled before fulfilling the lubricating need. More thorough research was required to analyze crucial characteristics such viscosity, flash point, thermo-oxidative and storage stability of the oils, techno economics, and sustainability, which will be the focus of future work to resolve these problems.