Sustainable Cooling and Lubrication Strategies in Machining Processes: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Applying an adequate cooling and lubrication technique during machining processes is an important issue which affects the machining system efficiency. Flood cooling offers an effective solution to reduce the effect of the high heat generated during cutting processes; however, it is not a sustainable strategy because of the health and environmental concerns associated with its utilization. Therefore, several cooling and lubrication strategies have been suggested and used as alternatives to the flood cooling. These strategies include; dry cutting, cryogenic approach, minimum quantity lubrication (MQL), nano-cutting fluids, and MQL-nano-fluids. In this work, a comparative study is presented to evaluate the sustainability effectiveness of these strategies. In order to evaluate the strategies effectiveness, five sustainability indicators are used; namely, energy consumption, personal safety and health, waste management, machining costs, and environmental impact. A weighted decision matrix is developed to assess the studied strategies in terms of the employed sustainable indicators.