• Tribology and Lubricants
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• 제32권3호
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• pp.95-100
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• 2016

As an alternative fuel, biodiesel has excellent lubricating property. Previously, our research group reported that the properties of biodiesels depended on their composed molecular structure. In this study, we investigate lubricity and the mechanism of lubricity improvement of synthesized biodiesel molecules. We synthesize four types of biodiesel components from fatty acid via fisher esterification and soybean biodiesel from soybean oil via transesterification in high yield (92-96%). We analyze the lubricity of the five 5 types of biodiesel using HFRR (high frequency reciprocating rig). We estimate that the mechanism of lubricity is relevant to the molecular structure and structure conversion of biodiesel. The test results indicate that the longer the length of molecules and the higher the content of olefin, the better the lubricity of the biodiesel molecules. However, the wear scar size of the first test samples’ do not show a regular pattern with the wear scar size of the second test samples’. Moreover, we investigated the structure conversion of the biodiesels by using GC-MS for the recovered biodiesel samples from the HFRR test. However, we do not detect structure conversion. Thus, we conclude that the lubricity of biodiesel depends on how effectively solid adsorption and boundary lubrication occurs based on the size of the molecule and the content of olefin in the molecule. In addition, HFRR test condition in not sufficient for Diels-Alder cyclization of biodiesel components.