Development and Performance Evaluation of Bio-Degradable Nanocutting Fluid

Various cutting fluids are available in the cutting fluid market to provide good machining performances for metal cutting industries. Incidentally, most of the cutting fluids are synthetic and semisynthetic in nature, and although they are beneficial to the industries, they are posing health and environmental issues. Even if these cutting fluids have sufficient properties required for good machining, the major constraints associated with these fluids are their nature of nonbiodegradability and nonfriendliness to the environment. To overcome these difficulties, intense research is carried out to develop biodegradable and effective cutting fluids. In this research, a novel castor oil-based cutting fluid infused with nanomolybdenum (MoS₂) particles has been developed and its various machining properties have been investigated. Various important cutting parameters like surface roughness, tool life, and cutting force were investigated using this newly developed biodegradable nanofluid as a cutting fluid. Comparative experimental studies have also been undertaken with sunflower oil blend and conventional synthetic oil. Observed results validated that the newly developed castor oil-based nanofluid improves the surface finish and tool life by minimizing the cutting force developed to the considerable extent.