Development and Evaluation of Environmentally Friendly and Performance EnhancedLubricants for Marine Applications

摘要

There are many properties of a lubricant which can influence its performance. Inorder to improve on a lubricant, the application within which the lubricant will be used must be considered to determine which properties are the most crucial. This work has focused on two lubricants, an oil and a grease, which are for use in different marine applications. Improving on the wear performance of both lubricants was a priority in order to improve on the lifetime of these marine systems. Another motivation, particularly for the oil, was to make the new lubricant more environmentally friendly than the currently used mineral oil. The base fluid for the oil lubricant was chosen to be a polyalkylene glycol based on previous work. The oil would need to be insoluble in water which limited the choice to polypropylene glycols. Additives were evaluated on several bench tests to improve performance properties as needed. The main properties investigated include: wear protection on steel, aluminum, nickel aluminum bronze and manganese bronze systems, foaming tendency and oxidation properties.