Energy consumption and ecological analysis of sustainable and conventional cutting fluid strategies in machining 15-5 PHSS

Recently, the intense exquisite actions taken by Government authorities generate an immediate requirement to develop more energy-efficient and environment-friendly machining processes. It has been realized to emerge a sustainable alternative to conventional carbon-based coolants in machining processes and select optimum process parameters for reducing the harmful impacts on the environment. However, little literature has been identified which compares the various cutting fluid strategies based on energy consumption and LCA analysis for the combination of the same process parameters and material. Especially, the environmental impacts generated due to nano-cutting fluids are still not explored. Therefore, this study presents the analysis of eight different cutting fluid strategies i.e., Dry, Wet, Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL), Electrostatic MQL (EMQL), Hybrid Nanoparticles immersed EMQL (HNPEMQL), Electrostatic Lubrication (EL), LCO2, and LN2 in turning application of 15-5 Precipitated Hardened Stainless Steel (PHSS) at nine different combinations of cutting speeds (vc) and feeds (f). As a result, for the dry and HNPEMQL cutting conditions, the highest and lowest energy consumption have been observed correspondingly. Approximately, 5%, 5%, 8%, 4%, 4%, 5%, and 10% correspondingly higher energy consumption have been identified in EMQL, MQL, EL, Wet, LCO2, LN2, and dry cutting condition in comparison with HNPEMQL. However, HNPEQML was come out as the cutting condition having the highest environmental impact.