{"title":"Current Knowledge on Friction, Lubrication, and Wear of Ethanol-Fuelled Engines—A Review","authors":"H. Costa, T. Cousseau, Roberto Martins Souza","doi":"10.3390/lubricants11070292","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The urgent need for drastic reduction in emissions due to global warming demands a radical energy transition in transportation. The role of biofuels is fundamental to bridging the current situation towards a clean and sustainable future. In passenger cars, the use of ethanol fuel reduces gas emissions (CO2 and other harmful gases), but can bring tribological challenges to the engine. This review addresses the current state-of-the-art on the effects of ethanol fuel on friction, lubrication, and wear in car engines, and identifies knowledge gaps and trends in lubricants for ethanol-fuelled engines. This review shows that ethanol affects friction and wear in many ways, for example, by reducing lubricant viscosity, which on the one hand can reduce shear losses under full film lubrication, but on the other can increase asperity contact under mixed lubrication. Therefore, ethanol can either reduce or increase engine friction depending on the driving conditions, engine temperature, amount of diluted ethanol in the lubricant, lubricant type, etc. Ethanol increases corrosion and affects tribocorrosion, with significant effects on engine wear. Moreover, ethanol strongly interacts with the lubricant’s additives, affecting friction and wear under boundary lubrication conditions. Regarding the anti-wear additive ZDDP, ethanol leads to thinner tribofilms with modified chemical structure, in particular shorter phosphates and increased amount of iron sulphides and oxides, thereby reducing their anti-wear protection. Tribofilms formed from Mo-DTC friction modifier are affected as well, compromising the formation of low-friction MoS2 tribofilms; however, ethanol is beneficial for the tribological behaviour of organic friction modifiers. Although the oil industry has implemented small changes in oil formulation to ensure the proper operation of ethanol-fuelled engines, there is a lack of research aiming to optimize lubricant formulation to maximize ethanol-fuelled engine performance. The findings of this review should shed light towards improved oil formulation as well as on the selection of materials and surface engineering techniques to mitigate the most pressing problems.","PeriodicalId":18135,"journal":{"name":"Lubricants","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Lubricants","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3390/lubricants11070292","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, MECHANICAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
The urgent need for drastic reduction in emissions due to global warming demands a radical energy transition in transportation. The role of biofuels is fundamental to bridging the current situation towards a clean and sustainable future. In passenger cars, the use of ethanol fuel reduces gas emissions (CO2 and other harmful gases), but can bring tribological challenges to the engine. This review addresses the current state-of-the-art on the effects of ethanol fuel on friction, lubrication, and wear in car engines, and identifies knowledge gaps and trends in lubricants for ethanol-fuelled engines. This review shows that ethanol affects friction and wear in many ways, for example, by reducing lubricant viscosity, which on the one hand can reduce shear losses under full film lubrication, but on the other can increase asperity contact under mixed lubrication. Therefore, ethanol can either reduce or increase engine friction depending on the driving conditions, engine temperature, amount of diluted ethanol in the lubricant, lubricant type, etc. Ethanol increases corrosion and affects tribocorrosion, with significant effects on engine wear. Moreover, ethanol strongly interacts with the lubricant’s additives, affecting friction and wear under boundary lubrication conditions. Regarding the anti-wear additive ZDDP, ethanol leads to thinner tribofilms with modified chemical structure, in particular shorter phosphates and increased amount of iron sulphides and oxides, thereby reducing their anti-wear protection. Tribofilms formed from Mo-DTC friction modifier are affected as well, compromising the formation of low-friction MoS2 tribofilms; however, ethanol is beneficial for the tribological behaviour of organic friction modifiers. Although the oil industry has implemented small changes in oil formulation to ensure the proper operation of ethanol-fuelled engines, there is a lack of research aiming to optimize lubricant formulation to maximize ethanol-fuelled engine performance. The findings of this review should shed light towards improved oil formulation as well as on the selection of materials and surface engineering techniques to mitigate the most pressing problems.
期刊介绍:
This journal is dedicated to the field of Tribology and closely related disciplines. This includes the fundamentals of the following topics: -Lubrication, comprising hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, elastohydrodynamics, mixed and boundary regimes of lubrication -Friction, comprising viscous shear, Newtonian and non-Newtonian traction, boundary friction -Wear, including adhesion, abrasion, tribo-corrosion, scuffing and scoring -Cavitation and erosion -Sub-surface stressing, fatigue spalling, pitting, micro-pitting -Contact Mechanics: elasticity, elasto-plasticity, adhesion, viscoelasticity, poroelasticity, coatings and solid lubricants, layered bonded and unbonded solids -Surface Science: topography, tribo-film formation, lubricant–surface combination, surface texturing, micro-hydrodynamics, micro-elastohydrodynamics -Rheology: Newtonian, non-Newtonian fluids, dilatants, pseudo-plastics, thixotropy, shear thinning -Physical chemistry of lubricants, boundary active species, adsorption, bonding