I've been a hypocrite. I cycle to promote the premise of sustainable transportation while using toxic, petrochemical chain lubricants! So, I've started using a vegetable oil-based lubricant on my bicycles. This way I'm using a biodegrable, non-toxic, domestically-produced produced product!
But me alone using it doesn't make much of a difference! So, I want to share this product at BikeRoWave, but need a sort of bottle to put in. So... give me your bottles! I'll take anything that can be used to apply chain lube to a bike. It can an empty chain lube bottle that once had petro-based stuff in it or even a contact lens solution bottle. Any bottle with a tip for letting fluid out a drop at a time will work.
You're not talking about the stuff at
http://ernestolube.com/ are you?
Unless some additive is added to make the vegetable oil hydrophobic, I wouldn't recommend using it on metals that can corrode. There are also concerns that depending on the oil, it can degrade over time and turn into sludge (precisely because it has poor oxidative stability, i.e. biodegradable).
http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/JOTRE9-ft/vol_129/iss_2/419_1.html"Free fatty acids tend to react with the oxide on metal surface and form soaps, which by their nature are hydrophilic. The soaps of fatty acids thus formed can lead to detrimental interactions with the metal surface, i.e., absorption of water with subsequent corrosion and increased wear rate."
"Coconut oil and other vegetable oils tested for corrosion characteristics as base oil for lubricants showed significant corrosion in the presence of moisture. The quantum chemical analysis showed that the highly polar (COOH) head groups of fatty acid constituents of vegetable oils act as hydrophilic centres, leading to increased corrosion in the presence of water."
It looks like sulfurized jojoba oil is promising (
http://www.agripinoy.net/farming-jojoba-promising-crop-2.html), though no commercial product seems to be currently available.
