Palm oil olein and palm oil ester is well-known potential candidate in plant-based oil to replace the conventional mineral oil. Harvested all year round, the advantages and benefits initiate the palm oil to be used in varieties of application. In this paper, palm oil olein was tested on its capability as a lubricant to replace the mineral oil. To enrich the performance of this oil, different types of nanoparticles additives were added. Previous studies proved that by adding small size of additives into lubricating oil can lessen the friction and improve anti-wear properties. The adjustment of the lubricating oil with nanoparticle additives will reduce the friction between two contact surfaces and produce less heat. In his study, three type material of solid additives namely nanoclay and carbon nanotubes were used. Four ball tester following ASTM D4072-94 was conducted to determine the optimum concentration of each additives and its tribological properties under boundary lubrication (metal to metal contact). Result obtained shows that the addition of 0.04 wt% of carbon nanotubes recorded the lowest coefficient of friction with a 10.8% improvement compared to the pure palm oil. The additive also contributed to better wear scar diameters and possessed good anti-wear properties for palm oil. This thus shows the significant potential of carbon nanotubes as the wear preventive additive for palm oil olein. It is also discovered that 0.04 wt% of nanoclays additive is the optimum concentration of the mixture with coefficient of friction reduced 22.16% compared to mineral oil.

In the present study, palm oil has been tested to study its capability as a lubricant to replace commercial mineral oil. To enrich the performance, nanoparticles additives were added. Previous studies proved that by adding the small size of additives into lubricating oil can lessen the friction and improve anti-wear properties. In this research, the size of the nanoparticle used was below 20nm. Four ball tester following ASTM D4072-94 was conducted to determine the optimum concentration of palm oil bio-lubricant with Nano-clay additive ranged from 0.02% to 0.08%wt. The results discovered that 0.04wt% of Nano-clay additive added into palm oil was the optimum concentration of the lubricant with the coefficient of friction 0.081, which recorded 16% reduction as compared to mineral oil (20W-40) – the reference lubricant. It also shows good anti-wear ability which the wear scar diameter was improved by 32%. The oil was then tested in journal bearing to characterize the hydrodynamic lubrication properties. The properties that have been observed were the coefficient of friction, pressure profile and temperature profile. The results showed that modified palm oil with Nano-clay provided better performance with low coefficient of friction (reduced more than 50% as compared to mineral oil) and also temperature profile (reduced up to 20% compared to mineral oil). As for the pressure profile, even slightly higher pressure recorded for palm oil due to lower viscosity, yet the pressure was improved with the presence of Nano-clay additive. In overall, it had been proven that palm oil with Nano-clay additive shows massive potential as an alternative lubricant to the same range with the current industrial mineral oil.