DEVELOPMENT OF VEGETABLE OIL BASED NANO CUTTING FLUID- EXPERIMENTAL STUDY AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION.

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.