A COOLING POTENTIAL OF FORMULATED BIO-QUENCHANT OILS ON A CAST ALUMINIUM ALLOY MATERIAL

Abstract

The biodegradable vegetable oil based quenchants can serve as cooling media alternative to that of the toxic non-biodegradable petroleum based mineral oil in a heat treatment of aluminium and its alloy. 70 vol. % of edible vegetable oil are blended with 30 vol. % of Jatropha oil to form bio-quenchant oils for Aluminium (Al)-alloy probe treated at 500oC and soaked for 15 min in a muffle furnace. The cooling potential properties such as the cooling rate, the heat transfer coefficient, the Grossman quench severity and the biot number are investigated. The results obtained show that the blended bleached (BB) melon oil provides the highest cooling rate of 49.30oC s-1, while the blended raw (BR) palm oil ensures the lowest cooling rate of 18.45oCs-1. Heat transfer coefficients of 704.6 Wm-2K-1, 432.3 Wm-2K-1, and 394.4 Wm-2K-1 are exhibited by the blended bleached melon oil, the blended raw melon oil and the blended bleached groundnut oil, respectively. They are found higher than that of a petroleum based mineral oil, which amounts to 68.7 Wm-2K-1. The lowest heat transfer coefficient of 272.11 Wm-2K-1 is obtained in case of using a blended raw palm oil. The quench severity of the blended bleached melon oil, the blended raw melon oil and the blended raw groundnut oil refers to a Grossman H-factor of 1.01 m-1, 0.78 m-1, and 0.67 m-1, respectively. The latter values are higher than that obtained in case of a blended raw palm oil, which is equal to 0.37 m-1. However, the heat flow parameters obtained reveal that the blended bleached and the blended raw melon and groundnut oil can be characterized as fast quenching oils, while the blended bleached and the blended raw palm oil can be characterized as medium quenching oils of results comparable to and even better than those of the industrial petroleum based mineral oil.