Microalgae Biomass as a New Potential Source of Sustainable Green Lubricants

Abstract

Lubricants are materials able to reduce friction and/or wear of any type of moving surfaces facilitating smooth operations, maintaining reliable machine functions, and reducing risks of failures while contributing to energy savings. At present, most worldwide used lubricants are derived from crude oil. However, production, usage and disposal of these lubricants have significant impact on environment and health. Hence, there is a growing pressure to reduce demand of this sort of lubricants, which has fostered development and use of green lubricants, as vegetable oil-based lubricants (biolubricants). Despite the ecological benefits of producing/using biolubricants, availability of the required raw materials and agricultural land to create a reliable chain supply is still far from being established. Recently, biomass from some microalgae species has attracted attention due to their capacity to produce high-value lipids/oils for potential lubricants production. Thus, this multidisciplinary work reviews the main chemical-physical characteristics of lubricants and the main attempts and progress on microalgae biomass production for developing oils with pertinent lubricating properties. In addition, potential microalgae strains and chemical modifications to their oils to produce lubricants for different industrial applications are identified. Finally, a guide for microalgae oil selection based on its chemical composition for specific lubricant applications is provided.

Facilitating Investigations of Sustainable Ester Oils: Lubricating Performance, Phytotoxicity Indicators, and Their Structure–Activity Relationship

“…Currently, environmental issues such as sustainable development and carbon-neutrality goals need to be addressed, which have also been top priorities in lubricant development . Lubricating materials possess an adverse impact on the environment during usage and disposal. , For the former, lubricants may volatilize hazardous substances that contaminate the air and soil. Besides, lubricants may pollute the aquatic environment due to inevitable loss to water.…”

“…1 Lubricating materials possess an adverse impact on the environment during usage and disposal. 2,3 For the former, lubricants may volatilize hazardous substances that contaminate the air and soil. Besides, lubricants may pollute the aquatic environment due to inevitable loss to water.…”

Biolubricant Synthesis by Additization and Chemical Modification from Lipid-Rich Brackish Coelastrella sp. Using a Biorefinery Approach

“…could be produced by microalgae. − According to the literature, several microalgae produce substantial quantities of lipids ranging from 20 to 50%. − In addition to having a higher lipid content and high-value pigments, the microalgal lipid component additionally contains polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) . Even though microalgae have been extensively studied for biofuel, high-value pigments, and EPS, the production of biolubricants from microalgae has received comparatively limited attention. − In a recent study, freshwater Chlorella sp. microalgal oil was extracted, transesterified, and then blended with PAO; the minimum content of PAO was 80% of the total blend.…”

Tribological Aspects of Sheet Titanium Forming

“…Thus, the lubricant is irretrievably lost in subsequent forming operations. In order to minimize hazardous lubricant waste, some authors propose to replace technological lubricants based on mineral oils with green lubricants [ 28 , 42 ], e.g., based on vegetable oils, which are not only biodegradable substances but also, due to the presence of long fatty acid chains, have a good ability to adhere to metal surfaces, thus ensuring good lubrication in boundary friction conditions [ 43 , 44 ]. Deshmukh et al [ 45 ] and Chowdary et al [ 46 ], however, point out that vegetable oils degrade at elevated temperatures, which limits their use to cold-forming processes.…”

“…Most of these materials have superlubricating properties, which means that the coefficient of friction ( CoF ) is less than 0.01 [ 50 ]. Farfan-Cabrera et al [ 42 ] proposed microalgae lubricants as potential green substitutes for mineral and synthetic oils, as well as vegetable ones.…”