Performance of vegetable oils as a cooling medium in comparison to a standard mineral oil

Immersion quenching is the most widely used quenching technique today and i s usually one of the last steps in heat treat processing. Improper hardenin g to incorrect cooling is generally a great loss and causes a great percent age of manufacturing costs. To avoid a failure in cooling, researchers are committed to describing the cooling effect as precisely as possible. The cooling of immersion cooled workpieces or probes is generally character ized by the process of wetting. Evaporable fluids exhibit the three well kn own stages of cooling: vapor blanket stage, boiling stage, and convective h eat transfer. Therefore cooling behavior is influenced by a wide variety an d depends on a number of parameters, that is, type of quenchant used, bath temperature, rate of agitation, and the physical and chemical properties of the quenched parts. Environmental pollution has caused the search for new products in hardening and shock cooling of steels. The use of soybean oils as quenching fluids i s new, and compared with standard mineral oils, there are many advantages m ainly concerning the environment and the health of workers.