Formulation and analysis of cost-effective environment-friendly metal cutting nanofluids using zinc oxide on turning of AISI 52100 steel using MQL

Many research works focused on using vegetable oils alone as cutting fluid and some with nanoparticles for better lubrication. But very few literature pieces are available for the use of environment-friendly nanoparticles and vegetable oils in machining. Also, the nanoparticles generally used for the research is expensive. With this paper’s help, some alternatives to conventional machining fluids are exposed through the formulation and analysis of nanofluids, which are economically feasible, effective lubricants, and environmentally friendly. For this, vegetable oils such as palm oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, coconut oil, and castor oil are used to turn AISI 52100 (EN31) steels using tungsten carbide insert (VNMG160408) under the environment of a minimum quantity of lubrication. A newly developed environment-friendly metal cutting nanofluids of three base fluids is prepared with three zinc oxide concentrations. The most suitable nanoparticle inclusion ratio for nanofluid preparation is determined after machining at fixed levels of machining parameters.Further experiments and analyses are carried out based on Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array to identify the appropriate cutting parameters for optimization. A considerable reduction in surface roughness and the cutting temperature are achieved using an environmentally-friendly metal cutting nanofluids instead of the base fluids. A maximum reduction in surface roughness of about 57% is obtained for EN31 using palm oil-based metal cutting nanofluids with 0.125% of the nanoparticle. About 13% drop in cutting temperature is observed using sunflower and groundnut based metal cutting nanofluids, both with 0.125% concentration. Results also indicate that the environment-friendly metal cutting nanofluids used in the experiment can replace the conventional fluids used in most metal cutting industries.