Energy Efficiency and Vegetable Based Two Stroke Engine Oil

Two-stroke engines are very widely used, from farm equipment, landscaping tools, and tuk-tuks; they are very cheap and very powerful engines. However, two-stroke engines have one massive drawback and that is that they burn oil, as a result they are unclean engines which is why in the ’70s, with the rise of environmental regulation, most companies switched to making vastly cleaner four stroke engines. These are the kinds of engines used in cars today. However, in recent years many engineers and scientists have looked back on using two-stroke engines, especially in economically less fortunate areas because of the ease of access, their simplicity, and power. However, the problem of oil burning must be solved first. Many solutions include using biodegradable, environmentally friendly vegetable oil as a mineral oil substitute. More research needs to be done on the effectiveness of this solution which is where my research will be focused.

There is a fair amount of information on the lubrication that vegetable oils provide; however, there is not definitive research into the effects of the oils on power output. The first study I examined: “Alternative eco-friendly lubes for clean two-stroke engines” provided a lot of valuable information into what I am looking into testing but the research article did not define how the oils were synthesized and did not include what was in them. I found no data at all ensuring that the oils used were vegetable oil derived formulas and as such the novelty in the subject still exists. Furthermore, I will be using different oils and examining how power was affected, which the study did not investigate. I will be examining the effects on total power output relative to chemical potential energy to demonstrate whether vegetable oils will have an impact on the performance of the two-stroke engine. I hypothesize that vegetable oils will retain the power output of the two-stroke engine based on the percentage of vegetable oil to castor oil at various times/temperatures and as such the information will be vital to assessing the viability of future use of biodegradable vegetable oil derived two-stroke oils.