Abstract

Mineral oil based lubricants are non-renewable, harmful to health and prone to price fluctuations. Thus, vegetable oils are considered as suitable alternatives to mineral oils for lubricant production. Research on the use of non-edible vegetable oils for lubricant development has become necessary. The tribological evaluation of lubricant developed from non-edible vegetable (mahogany) seed oil for industrial applications have been carried out in this study. The oil was characterized, modified for suitability and used to develop lubricants for industrial applications at the petroleum chemistry laboratory American University of Nigeria (AUN) Yola. Commercially available mineral oil based lubricant SAE 20/W50 was used as a control. The mahogany seed oil exhibited a lower coefficient of friction 0.075 in comparison to the mineral oil lubricant 0.115 and also exhibited a wear rate of 0.0068 mm3N-1m-1, which is comparable to the wear rate of the mineral oil 0.0067 mm3N-1m-1.