Abstract:
Cutting fluids, used in manufacturing process as coolant and lubricant, are currently based on
mineral oils which are depleting and non-eco-friendly. A good replacement is vegetable oil based cutting fluids which are renewable and non-hazardous to environment being
biodegradable. Pongamia oil is one such non-edible vegetable oil extracted from Pongamia
seeds. Various vegetable based cutting fluids have been formulated from edible oils but less
works is reported on non-edible oils. Measured fatty acid profile of Pongamia oil makes it
suitable for selecting Pongamia oil. Moreover, less works has been done on the development
of POME (Pongamia Oil Methyl Ester) based oil in water emulsion nano cutting fluids. In the
present study, raw Pongamia oil is converted to bio diesel (POME) by transesterification
process. The developed POME is converted to POME-water emulsion by adding suitable
concentration of polysorbate-80 emulsifier. Nano-cutting fluid was formulated by adding
aluminium oxide nanoparticles to a trans -esterified Pongamia Oil water emulsion at different
volume fraction. Then thermal conductivity, viscosity and corrosive nature of POME and the
formulated nano-cutting fluid was studied. Mild steel workpieces with uniform dimensions
were machined on a CNC lathe by applying synthetic, POME-water emulsion, 0.1%, 0.3%,
0.5% samples of cutting fluids. The cutting fluid was delivered to the machining zone by a
spraying machine. This machined mild steel samples were subjected to surface roughness test
under MITUTOYO SJ-410 surface testing machine. Then the measured surface roughness
values were used for evaluating the performance of different cutting fluid samples. The thermal
conductivity, viscosity, corrosion resistance and surface finish increased with increase in
volume concentration of nanoparticles.
