HEAT TRANSFER COEFFICIENTS AND QUENCHING PERFORMANCE OF VEGETABLE OILS

Vegetable oils are currently used a basestocks for biodegradable, renewable basestocks for quenchant formulation. However, there are relatively few references relating to their true equivalency, or lack thereof, relative to quenching performance of petroleum oil based quenchant formulations. To obtain an overview of the variability vegetable oil quenching performance, cooling curves and rewetting properties were determined and the heat transfer coefficient profiles were calculated at the Institute of Materials Modification and Modeling School of Materials Science and Engineering in Shanghai, China. The vegetable oils that were studied included: cottonseed, peanut, canola, coconut, palm, sunflower, corn and a soybean oil. Ccooling curves were obtained using the Tensi multiple surface thermocouple 15 mm diameter x 45 mm cylindrical Inconel 600 probe. For comparison, similar data was obtained with Houghtoquench H100, a conventional petroleum quenchant oil and Houghtoquench HKM, an accelerated petroleum oil quenchant. The results of this work will be discussed here.