Location: Sustainable Biofuels and Co-products Research
Project Number: 8072-41000-110-013-R
Project Type: Reimbursable Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 15, 2024
End Date: Aug 14, 2025
Objective:
Increased regulations over environmental pollution and contaminations have boosted the need to develop next-generation biodegradable and renewable lubricants. Biolubricants are the type of lubricants produced from renewable, non-toxic, and biodegradable natural resources such as vegetable and animal-based oils. Competition for oil seeds for food use and higher prices present the need for cheaper alternate resources. Waste Cooking Oils (WCO) which are two to three times cheaper than raw vegetable oils can play a pivotal role in this aspect. Very few to no systematic investigations have been carried out to evaluate the potential of WCO on efficient lubricants. Our proposed research will explore the compatibility of WCO-derived lubricants and future electric vehicles.
Approach:
Our proposed project consists of two novel approaches-(a) formulation of chemically modified biolubricant from WCOs and (b) performance analysis of derived lubricants for next-generation electric vehicles.
We plan to first derive a proper filtration protocol to extract usable WCO for lubricant formulation. Next, we will chemically modify WCO and additize it with select ionic liquid (IL) additives into it to enhance its tribological behavior. We hypothesize that the proper chemical modification of WCO-based lubricants and the addition of IL can allow them to be used as electric vehicle (EV) transmission fluid.
In this project, USDA-ARS scientists will leverage their expertise to chemically modify the WCO to lubricant base fluid with desirable lubricant properties.
