Lubricant additives are one of the most commonly used additives in lubricants today. They help lubes, greases and oils perform at elevated temperatures, improve their performance, enhance the life cycle of the products it is added to and more. Here's more about Lubricant Additives and why you want them in your lube.
Lubricant additives can be beneficial as part of a greasing program in a variety of settings: from machine shop floors to conveyor belts and many other industrial applications to your car or truck.
The lubricant additive is one of the most effective and popular additives used in today's engine oil. Despite the constant technological changes, these additives have not been considered as side products or useless agents in the oil, but they contribute effectively to engine protection against wear and corrosion.
Lubricant additives are added to lubricants to change their characteristics. Sulfur compounds in the base oil interact with additives to produce better lubrication and sludge resistance. Each lubricant additive has a number of functions that make it perform differently according to the needs of the additive.
Lubricant additives are something you're probably aware of, but maybe you haven't stopped to think too much about them. But there's actually a lot more to lubricant additives than you might think. Lubricant additives are products that are either added to a base lubricant (like motor oil) or are used on their own to modify the properties of a lubricant.
How Lubricant additives Help You
Lubricants are used to reduce friction and wear between moving parts. They can also be used to reduce the coefficient of friction between surfaces that do not move. Lubrication reduces the amount of energy required for a moving part to overcome friction and increases the useful life of a mechanical part by reducing wear on its surface.
Lubricants exist in a wide variety of forms including liquid, solid and gaseous. Lubricants may be solid at room temperatures, such as waxes and oils; they may be liquids at room temperatures, such as mineral oil or animal fat; they may be liquids at higher temperatures, such as petroleum jelly (petroleum jelly) or silicone oil (silicone oil); or they may be gases at room temperature such as air.
Lubricants are often added to fuel to improve combustion efficiency, especially in diesel engines or other compression-ignition engines where air cannot easily reach all areas of the fuel charge due to poor mixing during injection into the cylinder head. In these cases, fuel additives called "cetane improvers" are added to ensure good ignition when the fuel is compressed during combustion.
The following are some examples of lubricant additives:
Anti-wear agents. These substances help reduce wear in gears, bearings, chains, etc. They can also be used in crankcases to reduce the number of metal particles (wear) that enter the oil during engine operation. Some anti-wear agents include molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) and graphite.
Rust inhibitors or anti-oxidants. These substances prevent metal surfaces from oxidizing or rusting when exposed to oxygen at high temperatures for extended periods of time. For example, an anti-rust additive is often added to crankcase oils in two-stroke engines because they run hot and produce more exhaust gases than four-stroke engines.
Antifoam agents or defoamers. These substances prevent foam formation on top of liquids such as oil because they lower surface tension between the liquid molecules and air molecules; thus reducing the tendency for bubbles to form due to agitation when pumping oil into a tank or reservoir.