click here to download - UniKL MIMET Official Website

oxide or other anti‐oxidant additives [8]. The
melting point indicates at which temperature
the oil will start to solidify thus making it useless
as hydraulic fluid base oil. A high melting point
will require the oil to be treated with more addi‐
tives to reduce its melting point to practical val‐
ues. Table 1 showed that the palm kernel oil and
palm oil have relatively low iodine values com‐
pared to other vegetable oils. This indicates that
palm kernel oil and palm oil have better anti‐
oxidant properties compared to rapeseed oil and
soybean oil hence require less anti‐oxidant addi‐
tive. The downside is that the melting points are
relatively high at 24 o C for the kernel oil and 35 o C
for the palm oil. More additives are required to
bring down the melting points of palm oils to be
comparable with rapeseed oil and soybean oil.
Researchers from Universiti Malaysia Tereng‐
ganu have experimented crude palm oil mixed
with Irgalube 343 additive for a hydraulic test rig
using the mixed fluid to actuate hydraulics linear
and rotary cylinders. It is reported that after
more than 100 hours of continuous testing, the
fluid mixture demonstrate an increased of vis‐
cosity. Obviously, further experiments with
other types of additives are necessary to obtain
palm oil mixture which is capable to sustain its
viscosity after hours of usage [13].
Another palm oil based hydraulic fluid research
was done by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board
(MPOB) under the Ministry of Plantation Indus‐
tries and Commodities. The result was a success‐
ful production of a hydraulic fluid with viscosity
grade ISO 46 with good viscosity index and mod‐
erately low pour point. The properties of the
palm based hydraulic fluid developed by MPOB
compared with typical petroleum based fluid are
given in table 2 [14] .
MIMET Technical Bulletin Volume 1 (2) 2010
Table 2: Properties of the MPOB Palm Based Hydraulic Fluid,
Hy‐Gard Petroleum Based Fluid and AMSOIL Synthetics [14]
Based from the researches of MPOB, palm oil
based hydraulic fluid is reported feasible espe‐
cially for use in temperate climate i.e. in tropical
countries. Comparing palm oil based hydraulic
fluid with petroleum based hydraulic fluid and
AMSOIL synthetic esters hydraulic fluid for com‐
mon hydraulic applications, palm based fluid
have similar properties except for its low pour
point.
Conclusion
The feasibility of using vegetable oil based hy‐
draulic fluids has already been proven with the
development and commercial availability of
rapeseed oil and soybean oil based hydraulic
fluids in Europe and the United State. Comparing
the properties of raw, unprocessed palm oil with
other major vegetable oil indicates the possibil‐
ity of utilizing palm oil as base oil for hydraulics
fluid for temperate climate due to the high melt‐
ing point and pour point of palm oil compared
with other vegetable oils (rapeseed, canola, soy‐
beans etc). Several researches has been done by
Malaysian researchers on the palm based hy‐
draulic fluid and its suitable additive.
| MARINE FRONTIER @ UniKL
67