Faculty Publications
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Item Reprocessed waste sunflower cooking oil as quenchant for heat treatment(Elsevier Ltd, 2020) Prathviraj, M.P.; Samuel, A.; Prabhu, K.N.The growing concern to minimize the use of petroleum derived mineral oil in heat treatment industries has led to the search for alternative eco-friendly quenchants. Although vegetable oils seem to be a viable option, the higher cost and inferior thermal and oxidation stability have limited their application in the heat treatment industry. The reuse of waste cooking oils for industrial heat treatment would not only make quenchants cost-efficient but also environment friendly. In this study, the cooling performance of waste sunflower cooking oil was assessed and compared with that of unused sunflower cooking and mineral oils. The waste sunflower oil was made suitable for quenching by cleaning and chemical treatment. The experiment to assess the suitability of reprocessed oil for quenching was conducted using an Inconel 600 standard probe according to ISO 9950 and ASTM D 6200 standards. The thermal history acquired while quenching of the probe was used to estimate the surface heat flux transients. The results indicated that the chemically treated waste sunflower cooking oil had a higher cooling performance than that of unused sunflower and the mineral oils. A good agreement was found between the heat flux transients and hardness data obtained with the quenched AISI 4140 steel probe. The simulation of temperature and hardness distribution indicated more uniformity along the length of the probe indicating more uniform cooling with chemically treated waste sunflower cooking oil. © 2020 Elsevier LtdItem Assessment of Heat Transfer Characteristics of Transesterified Waste Sunflower Cooking Oil Blends for Quench Hardening(Springer, 2022) Samuel, A.; Prabhu, K.N.Mineral oils used in the heat treatment industry are derivatives of non-renewable petroleum fuel and are toxic and non-biodegradable. Vegetable oils are an ideal substitute for mineral oil due to their superior heat transfer characteristics and eco-friendliness. However, the initial cost of vegetable oils is very high. In addition, the maintenance cost of vegetable oils would be higher due to their poor thermal and oxidative stability than mineral oil. In this context, recycling and reusing waste cooking oil could be a cheaper and eco-friendly alternative. In this study, the fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) produced from the waste sunflower cooking oil through transesterification was blended with sunflower and mineral oils at various proportions. The cooling characteristics of the FAME/oil blends were assessed using the cooling curve analysis according to ASTM D6200 and ISO9950 standards. A solution to the inverse heat conduction problem was used to estimate the spatiotemporal metal/quenchant interfacial heat flux. The uniformity of heat flux was analyzed. The results indicated that blending waste cooking oil-derived FAME in sunflower oil up to 60 vol.% and mineral oil up to 50 vol.% provided comparable cooling characteristics to pure oils. The estimated heat flux transients showed a marginal decrease in peak heat flux for FAME blends in sunflower oil, whereas an increased peak heat flux with mineral oil. The FAME blends less than 60 vol.% in sunflower oil showed higher cooling uniformity. With mineral oil, the blend proportion of up to 50 vol.% increased cooling uniformities compared to pure oil. The characteristic cooling time (t85) increased with the increase in FAME blends in oils. However, the distribution of t85 in the quench probe was uniform for FAME/oil blends. © 2022, ASM International.Item A Phase Transformation Enthalpy Parameter for Modeling Quench Hardening of Steels(Springer, 2024) Samuel, A.; Pranesh Rao, K.M.P.; Prabhu, K.N.The effect of phase transformations on the steel/quenchant interfacial heat flux during quench hardening heat treatment is investigated in the present work. Experimental and modeling approaches comprising the inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP) were employed to analyze the thermal behavior of different steel grades with varying section thicknesses. The results revealed that phase transformation led to a distinctive pattern of the interfacial heat flux, characterized by a dip and subsequent rise. We observed that increasing the section thickness increases the surface heat flux for stainless steel probes without phase transformation. In contrast, the surface heat flux decreased with thicker sections in phase transformation. The increased heat evolved due to the latent heat liberation during phase transformation, and a reduction in thermal diffusivity due to increased specific heat caused a fall in the heat flow rates. Furthermore, the study proposed a phase transformation enthalpy parameter (ΔQ) to access the enthalpy change during quenching. ΔQ was consistent for a specific steel grade and independent of section thickness but varied with the cooling rate or quench media. The incorporation of phase transformation in the quenching heat transfer model is complex due to the required material data, including TTT/CCT diagrams and thermophysical properties that vary with steel grade. The study suggests directly incorporating the ΔQ values into the heat conduction equation or the IHCP model with phase transformation, simplifying the simulation process and minimizing data inputs. A database on ΔQ as a function of temperature and cooling rate would facilitate heat transfer modeling during quench hardening. © 2023, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International.Item The Effect of Thermal Quench Cycling on the Stability and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Transesterified-Epoxidized Used Cooking Oil Blended Quench Medium(Springer, 2024) Samuel, A.; Prabhu, K.N.Mineral oil is a widely used quench media in the heat treatment industries. They are derived from petroleum crude oil, and are toxic, and non-biodegradable. Therefore, in order to minimize the use of mineral oil, the fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) derived from the used cooking oil through the transesterification process can be blended with mineral oil. However, due to the high amount of unsaturation, blending of FAME in mineral oil would decrease the thermal-oxidative stability of the oil. Therefore, in the present work, to improve the stability of the mineral/FAME blend quenchant, the unsaturation in the FAME is decreased through epoxidation. The stability of epoxidized FAME/mineral blended oil is assessed by thermogravimetric analysis and thermal quench cycling. The quench cycles were performed using an ISO 9950 Inconel 600 standard probe. The viscosity and cooling performance of the oil were assessed periodically after the 1st, 10th, 50th, and 100th quench cycle. Investigation of cooling performance was performed by carrying out cooling curve analysis and estimating metal/quenchant interfacial heat flux tranisents. The results indicated that the thermal stability of the blend quenchant was improved with the epoxidation of FAME. The relative increase in viscosity was lower for blend quenchants than that for the mineral oil. The epoxidized FAME/mineral oil blend showed comparable cooling performance as that of mineral oil as the number of quench cycles were increased. © ASM International 2023.