Abstract
The emergence of vegetable oil as a promising alternative lubricant in the tribological application space has fueled research for making these oils as useful as mineral oils. Tribological modification of vegetable oil by the addition of TiO2/gC3N4 nanocomposite (as a nanoadditive) was studied here. The dispersion of the nanoadditive in the vegetable oil showed good oil dispersion stability without the addition of any surfactant. The tribological studies were conducted in a four-ball tester using ASTM standard D5183. In addition, the effect of temperature on tribological performance was also studied to understand the oxidation behavior of vegetable oil. The results showed a significant improvement in friction and wear properties of the optimized nano-oil. The mechanism behind the improvement in friction and wear properties is annotated in this paper.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Department of Science and Technology (DST) for the financial support to establish Nano Functional Materials Technology Centre (NFMTC) through SR/NM/NAT/02-2005 project. Also, we would like to thank IIT Madras, Chennai, India. The SEM and Optical profilometry imaging have been carried out in Department of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering, IIT Madras.
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Nisha RANJAN. She received her integrated M. Tech. degree in nanotechnology in 2016 from Central University of Jharkhand, Jharkhand, India. After her master’s degree, she joined Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India in 2016 to pursue the Ph.D. degree. Her research interest includes the synthesis of nanoparticles and its application in energy conservation and conversion systems.
Sundara RAMAPRABHU. He received the Ph.D. degree in physics from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. Then, Dr. Ramaprabhu worked at Darmstadt, Germany for 2 years as an Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (AvH) Fellow and for 5 years at University of Geneva, Switzerland. He joined IITM, Chennai an assistant professor and subsequently became Institute Chair Professor. He is a DAAD Fellow, Visiting Fellow to Germany by BMBF & DFG German Science Foundations, Visiting Fellow to Republic of Korea and Japan. He is a member of American Chemical Society and member of Electrochemical Society. His research areas are nanotechnology, hydrogen energy technology, fuel cell technology, PV, Li ion battery, nanofluids, water purification, and CO2 capture. He has supervised 38 Ph.D. students and developed 10 technologies. He has published articles in 370 international journals of repute and has 40 patents.
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Ranjan, N., Shende, R.C., Kamaraj, M. et al. Utilization of TiO2/gC3N4 nanoadditive to boost oxidative properties of vegetable oil for tribological application. Friction 9, 273–287 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-019-0336-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-019-0336-9