As a Potential Hydraulic Fluid: Corn Oil Behavior Characteristics Examination

Abstract

Low toxicity, high biodegradability, renewability and high viscosity index of the plant (vegetable) oils made it have immense potential to replace the mineral cooling fluids. This study aims to evaluate the wear and friction behaviour characteristics of the corn fluid as a renewable bio-fluid resource. Base on the ASTM G-99 standard, behaviour characteristics of fluid were examined in terms of kinematic viscosity, friction force, coefficient of friction, wear scar diameter, and flash temperature parameter. Each experiment was do during one hour and 800 rpm as a rotation speed of disk and under four different loads 5,10,15,20 kg using the ball on disk tester, the (Mobil hydraulic fluid 424) used as a mineral cooling hydraulic fluid sample for compared the results. Based on the results, it was found that under low loads (5 and 10kg) the performance of vegetable fluid (corn) is better than the mineral hydraulic fluid (463.38 & 469.84 µm under 5kg and 567.1&593.74 µm under 10 kg respectively), also the values of friction coefficient of vegetable fluids were lower under high load as in the case of normal load 20 kg., which was 0.0159 for the corn and 0.0230 for the mineral fluid. Finally, it is concluded that the corn fluid could be an alternative renewable working cooling fluid due to its adequate performance.